Great expectations

1

GREAT EXPECTATIONS

AND

SOME ACCOUNT OF AN
EXTRAORDINARY TRAVELLER

Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2011

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Taking Leave of Joe

CLE ART yp E EDITION

THE WORKS OF

CHARLES DICKENS

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS

GREAT EXPECTATIONS

BOOKS, INC.

NEW YORK BOSTON

^Great Expectations^ was first issued in three volumes in

j86i ^ after having appeared as a serial in 'All the Year

Round' from December /, 1860^ to August j^ 1861. This

Edition contains all the copyright emendations made

tn the lext as revised by the Author in i86j

and 1 868

TYPESET, NICKELTYPED. PRINTED. AND BOUND
IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY
THE COLONIAL PRESS INC.. CLINTON. MASS.

AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED

TO

CHAUNCY HARE TOWNSHEND

1

ILLUSTRATIONS

Great Expectations

TAKING LEAVE OF JOE ..... Frontispiece

facing page 54
no

176

354
410

PIP WAITS ON MISS HAVISHAM .
OLD ORLICK AMONG THE CINDERS
LECTURING ON CAPITAL .
A RUBBER AT MISS HAVISHAM*S
**DON*T GO home'' ....
ON THE MARSHES BY THE LIMEKILN

GREAT EXPECTATIONS

Cjireat lixpecttafioiis

CHAPTER I

MY father's family name being Pirrip, and my christian
name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names
nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So, I called my-
self Pip, and came to be called Pip.

I give Pirrip as my father's family name, on the authority of his
tombstone and my sister — Mrs. Joe Gargery, who married the
blacksmith. As I never saw my father or my mother, and never
saw any likeness of either of them (for their days were long be-
fore the days of photographs) , my first fancies regarding what they
were like, were unreasonably derived from their tombstones. The
shape of the letters on my father's gave me an odd idea that he
was a square, stout, dark man, with curly black hair. From the
character and turn of the inscription, ^Also Georgiana Wife of
the Above,* I drew a childish conclusion that my mother was
freckled and sickly. To five little stone lozenges, each about a
foot and a half long, which were arranged in a neat row beside
Jieir grave, and were sacred to the memory of five little brothers
of mine — who gave up trying to get a living exceedingly early in
that universal struggle — I am indebted for a belief religiously en-
tertained that they had all been born on their backs with their
hands in their trousers-pockets, and had never taken them out
in this state of existence.

Ours was the marsh country, down by the river, within, as the
river wound, twenty miles of the sea. My first most vivid and

2 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

broad impression of the identity of things, seems to me to have
been gained on a memorable raw afternoon towards evening. At
such a time I found out for certain, that this bleak place over-
grown with nettles was the churchyard; and that Philip Pirrip,
late of this parish, and also Georgiana wife of the above, were
dead and buried; and that Alexander, Bartholomew, Abraham,
Tobias, and Roger, infant children of the aforesaid, were also
dead and buried; and that the dark flat wilderness beyond the
churchyard, intersected with dykes and mounds and gates, with
scattered cattle feeding on it, was the marshes; and that the low
leaden line beyond was the river ; and that the distant savage lair
from which the wind was rushing, was the sea; and that the
small bundle of shivers growing afraid of all and beginning to
cry, was Pip.

'Hold your noise!' cried a terrible voice, as a man started up
from among the graves at the side of the church porch. 'Keep stilly
you little devil, or I'll cut your throat!'

A fearful man, all in coarse grey, with a great iron on his leg.
A man with no hat, and with broken shoes, and with an old rag
tied round his head. A man who had been soaked in water, and
smothered in mud, and lamed by stones, and cut by flints, and
stung by nettles, and torn by briars; who limped, and shivered, and
glared and growled; and whose teeth chattered in his head as he
seized me by the chin.

'O! Don't cut my throat, sir,' I pleaded in terror. Tray don*t
do it, sir.'

'Tell us your name!' said the man. 'Quick!'

Tip, sir.'

*Once more,' said the man, staring at me. 'Give it mouth!'

Tip, Pip, sir.'

'Show us where you live,' said the man. Tint out the place!'

I pointed to where our village lay, on the flat inshore among
the alder-trees and pollards, a mile or more from the church.

The man, after looking at me for a moment, turned me upside
down, and emptied my pockets. There was nothing in them but a
piece of bread. When the church came to itself — for he was so
sudden and strong that he made it go head over heels before me,
and I saw the steeple under my feet — when the church came to

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 3

itself, I say, I was seated on a high tombstone, trembling, while
he ate the bread ravenously.

'You young dog,' said the man, licking his lips, 'what fal
cheeks you ha' got.'

I believe they were fat, though I was at that time undersized^
for my years, and not strong.

'Darn Me if I couldn't eat 'em,' said the man, with a threaten-
ing shake of his head, 'and if I han't half a mind to 't! '

I earnestly expressed my hope that he wouldn't, and held tighter
to the tombstone on which he had put me; partly, to keep myself
upon it; partly, to keep myself from crying.

'Now lookee here!' said the man. 'Where's your mother?'

'There, sir!' said I.

He started, made a short run, and stopped and looked over
his shoulder.

'There, sir!' I timidly explained. 'Also Georgiana. That's
my mother.'

'Oh!' said he, coming back. 'And is that your father alonger
your mother?'

'Yes, sir,' said I; 'him too; late of this parish.'

'Ha!' he muttered then, considering. 'Who d'ye live with —
supposin' you're kindly let to live, which I han't made up my
mind about?'

'My sister, sir — Mrs. Joe Gargery — wife of Joe Gargery, the
blacksmith, sir.'

'Blacksmith, eh?' said he. And looked down at his leg.

After darkly looking at his leg and at me several times, he
eame closer to my tombstone, took me by both arms, and tilted
me back as far as he could hold me; so that his eyes looked most
powerfully down into mine, and mine looked most helplessly up
into his.

'Now lookee here,' he said, 'the question being whether you're
to be let to live. You know what a file is?'

'Yes, sir.'

'And you know what wittles is?'

'Yes, sir.'

After each question he tilted me over a little more, so as to
give me a greater sense of helplessness and danger.

4 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

'You get me a file.' He tilted me again. 'And you get me wit-
ties.' He tilted me again. 'You bring 'em both to me.' He tilted
me again. 'Or I'll have your heart and liver out.' He tilted me
again.

I was dreadfully frightened, and so giddy that I clung to him
with both hands, and said, 'If you would kindly please to let me
keep upright, sir, perhaps I shouldn't be sick, and perhaps I
could attend more.'

He gave me a most tremendous dip and roll, so that the church
jumped over its own weather-cock. Then, he held me by the
arms in an upright position on the top of the stone, and went
on in these fearful terms:

'You bring me, to-morrow morning early, that file and them
wittles. You bring the lot to me, at that old Battery over yonder.
You do it, and you never dare to say a word or dare to make a sign
concerning your having seen such a person as me, or any person
sumever, and you shall be let to live. You fail, or you go from
my words in any partickler, no matter how small it is, and your
heart and your liver shall be tore out, roasted and ate. Now, I ain't
alone, as you may think I am. There's a young man hid with
me, in comparison with which young man I am a Angel. That
young man hears the words I speak. That young man has a
secret way pecooliar to himself, of getting at a boy, and at his
heart, and at his liver. It is in wain for a boy to attempt to hide
himself from that young man. A boy may lock his door, may
be warm in bed, may tuck himself up, may draw the clothes
over his head, may think himself comfortable and safe, but that
young man will softly creep and creep his way to him and tear him
open. I am keeping that young man from harming of you at the
present moment, with great difficulty. I find it wery hard to hold
that young man off of your inside. Now, what do you say?'

I said that I would get him the file, and I would get him what
broken bits of food I could, and I would come to him at the
Battery, early in the morning.

'Say, Lord strike you dead if you don't! ' said the man.

I said so, and he took me down.

'Now/ he pursued, 'you remember what you've undertook,
and you remember that young man, and you get home!'

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 5

*Goo-good-night, sir/ I faltered.

'Much of that I' said he, glancing about him over the cold wet
fiat, 'I wish I was a frog. Or a eel!'

At the same time, he hugged his shuddering body in both his
arms — clasping himself, as if to hold himself together — and limped
towards the low church wall. As I saw him go, picking his way
among the nettles, and among the brambles that bound the
green mounds, he looked in my young eyes as if he were eluding
the hands of the dead people, stretching up cautiously out of
their graves, to get a twist upon his ankle and pull him in.

When he came to the low church wall, he got over it, like a man
whose legs were numbed and stiff, and then turned round to look
for me. When I saw him turning, I set my face towards home, and
made the best use of my legs. But presently I looked over my
shoulder, and saw him going on again towards the river, still
hugging himself in both arms, and picking his way with his sore
feet among the great stones dropped into the marshes here and
there, for stepping-places when the rains were heavy, or the tide
was in.

The marshes were just a long black horizontal line then, as I
stopped to look after him; and the river was just another horizon-
tal line, not nearly so broad nor yet so black; and the sky was just
a row of long angry red lines and dense black lines intermixed.
On the edge of the river I could faintly make out the only two
black things in all the prospect that seemed to be standing upright;
one of these was the beacon by which the sailors steered — like an
unhooped cask upon a pole — an ugly thing when you were near
it; the other a gibbet, with some chains hanging to it which had
once held a pirate. The man was limping on towards this latter,
as if he were the pirate come to life, and come down, and going
back to hook himself up again. It gave me a terrible turn when I
thought so; and as I saw the cattle lifting their heads to gaze
after him, I wondered whether they thought so too. I looked
all round for the horrible young man, and could see no signs of him.
But now I was frightened again, and ran home without stopping.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS

CHAPTER II

My sister, Mrs. Joe Gargery, was more than twenty years older
than I, and had estabhshed a great reputation with herself and
the neighbours because she had brought me up 'by hand.' Having
at that time to find out for myself what the expression meant,
and knowing her to have a hard and heavy hand, and to be
much in the habit of laying it upon her husband as well as upon
me, I supposed that Joe Gargery and I were both brought up by
hand.

She was not a good-looking woman, my sister; and I had a
general impression that she must have made Joe Gargery marry
her by hand. Joe was a fair m.an, with curls of flaxen hair on each
side of his smooth face, and with eyes of such a very undecided
blue that they seemed to have somehow got mixed with their own
whites. He was a mild, good-natured, sweet-tempered, easy-going,
foolish, dear fellow — a sort of Hercules in strength, and also in
weakness.

My sister, Mrs. Joe, with black hair and eyes, had such a pre-
vailing redness of skin, that I sometimes used to wonder whether
it was possible she washed herself with a nutmeg-grater instead
of soap. She was tall and bony, and almost always wore a coarse
apron, fastened over her figure behind with two loops, and having
a square impregnable bib in front, that was stuck full of pins and
needles. She made it a powerful merit in herself, and a strong re-
proach against Joe that she wore this apron so much. Though
I really see no reason why she should have worn it at all; or why,
if she did wear it at all, she should not have taken it off every
day of her life.

Joe's forge adjoined our house, which was a wooden house, as
many of the dwellings in our country were — most of them, at
that time. When I ran home from the churchyard, the forge was
shut up, and Joe was sitting alone in the kitchen. Joe and I being
fellow-sufferers, and having confidences as such, Joe imparted a
confidence to me, the moment I raised the latch of the door and
peeped in at him opposite to it, sitting in the chimney corner.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 7

'Mrs. Joe has been out a dozen times, looking for you, Pip.
And she's out now, making it a baker's dozen.'

'Is she?'

'Yes, Pip,' said Joe; 'and what's worse, she's got Tickler with
her.'

At this dismal intelligence, I twisted the only button on my
waistcoat round and round, and looked in great depression at the
fire. Tickler was a wax-ended piece of cane, worn smooth by col-
lision with my tickled frame.

'She sot down,' said Joe, 'and she got up, and she made a grab
at Tickler, and she Ram-paged out. That's what she did,' said
Joe, slowly clearing the fire between the lower bars with the
poker, and looking at it: 'she Ram-paged out, Pip.'

'Has she been gone long, Joe?' I always treated him as a larger
species of child, and as no more than my equal.

'Well,' said Joe, glancing up at the Dutch clock, 'she's been on
the Ram-page, this last spell, about five minutes, Pip. She's a-com-
ing! Get behind the door, old chap, and have the jack-towel be-
twixt you.'

I took the advice. My sister, Mrs. Joe, throwing the door wide
open, and finding an obstruction behind it, immediately divined
the cause, and applied Tickler to its further investigation. She
concluded by throwing me — I often served as a connubial missile
— at Joe, who, glad to get hold of me on any terms, passed me on
into the chimney and quietly fenced me up there with his great leg.

'Where have you been, you young monkey?' said Mrs. Joe,
stamping her foot. 'Tell me directly what you've been doing to
wear me away with fret and fright and worrit, or I'd have you out
of that corner if you was fifty Pips, and he was five hundred
Gargerys.'

'I have only been to the churchyard,' said I, from my stool, cry-
ing and rubbing myself.

'Churchyard!' repeated my sister. 'If it warn't for me you'd
have been to the churchyard long ago, and stayed there. Who
brought you up by hand?'

'You did,' said I.

'And why did I do it, I should like to know?' exclaimed my
sister.

8 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

I whimpered, 'I don't know.'

7 don't!' said my sister. 'I'd never do it again! I know that.
I may truly say I've never had this apron of mine off, since born
you were. It's bad enough to be a blacksmith's wife (and him a
Gargery), without being your mother.'

My thoughts strayed from that question as I looked disconsol-
ately at the fire. For, the fugitive out on the marshes with the
ironed leg, the mysterious young man, the file, the food, and the
dreadful pledge I was under to commit a larceny on those shelter-
ing premises, rose before me in the avenging coals.

'Hah!' said Mrs. Joe, restoring Tickler to his station. 'Church-
yard, indeed! You may well say churchyard, you two.' One of
us, by the bye, had not said it at all. 'You'll drive me to the
churchyard betwixt you, one of these days, and oh, a pr-r-recious
pair you'd be without me!'

As she applied herself to set the tea-things, Joe peeped down
at me over his leg, as if he were mentally casting me and himself
up, and calculating what kind of pair we practically should make,
under the grievous circumstances foreshadowed. After that, he
sat feeling his right-side flaxen curls and whisker, and following
Mrs. Joe about with his blue eyes, as his manner always was at
squally times.

My sister had a trenchant way of cutting our bread-and-butter
for us, that never varied. First, with her left hand she jammed
the loaf hard and fast against her bib — where it sometimes got
a pin into it, and sometimes a needle, which we afterwards got
Into our mouths. Then she took some butter (not too much) on a
knife and spread it on the loaf, in an apothecary kind of way, as
if she were making a plaister — using both sides of the knife with
a slapping dexterity, and trimming and moulding the butter off
round the crust. Then, she gave the knife a final smart wipe on
the edge of the plaister, and then sawed a very thick round off
the loaf: which she finally, before separating from the loaf, hewed
into two halves, of which Joe got one, an I the other.

On the present occasion, though I was hungry, I dared not eat
my slice. I felt that I must have something in reserve for my dread-
ful acquaintance, and his ally the still more dreadful young man. I
knew Mrs. Joe's housekeeping to be of the strictest kind, and that

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 9

my larcenous researches might find nothing available in the safe.
Therefore I resolved to put my hunk of bread-and-butter down
the leg of my trousers.

The effort of resolution necessary to the achievement of this
purpose, I found to be quite awful. It was as if I had to make up
my mind to leap from the top of a high house, or plunge into
a great depth of water. And it was made the more difficult by the
unconscious Joe. In our already-mentioned free-masonry as fel-
low-sufferers, and in his good-natured companionship with me, it
was our evening habit to compare the way we bit through our
slices, by silently holding them up to each other's admiration
now and then — which stimulated us to new exertions. To-night,
Joe several times invited me, by the display of his fast-diminishing
slice, to enter upon our usual friendly competition; but he found
me, each time, with my yellow mug of tea on one knee, and my
untouched bread-and-butter on the other. At last, I desperately
considered that the thing I contemplated must be done, and that
it had best be done in the least improbable manner consistent
with the circumstances. I took advantage of a moment when Joe
had just looked at me, and got my bread-and-butter down my leg.

Joe was evidently made uncomfortable by what he supposed to
be my loss of appetite, and took a thoughtful bite out of his slice,
which he didn't seem to enjoy. He turned it about in his mouth
much longer than usual, pondering over it a good deal, and after
all gulped it down like a pill. He was about to take another bite,
and had just got his head on one side for a good purchase on it,
when his eye fell on me, and he saw that my bread-and-butter was
gone.

The wonder and consternation with which Joe stopped on the
threshold of his bite and stared at me, were too evident to escape
my sister's observation.

'What's the matter now?' said she, smartly, as she put down
her cup.

'I say, you know!' muttered Joe, shaking his head at me in
a very serious remonstrance. Tip, old chap! You'll do yourself
a mischief. It'll stick somewhere. You can't have chawed it, Pip.'

'What's the matter now?' repeated my sister, more sharply than
before.

10 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

•If you can cough a trifle on it up, Pip, I'd recommend you to
do it,' said Joe, all aghast. 'Manners is manners, but still your
elth's your elth.'

By this time, my sister was quite desperate, so she pounced on
Joe, and, taking him by the two whiskers, knocked his head for a
little while against the wall behind him: while I sat in the corner,
looking guiltily on.

'Now, perhaps you'll mention what's the matter,' said my sister,
out of breath, 'you staring great stuck pig.'

Joe looked at her in a helpless way; then took a helpless bite, and
looked at me again.

'You know, Pip,' said Joe, solemnly, with his last bite in his
cheek, and speaking in a confidential voice, as if we two were
quite alone, 'you and me is always friends, and I'd be the last
to tell upon you, any time. But such a — ' he moved his chair,
and looked about the floor between us, and then again at me —
'such a most uncommon bolt as that!'

'Been bolting his food, has he?' cried my sister.

'You know, old chap,' said Joe, looking at me, and not at Mrs.
Joe, with his bite still in his cheek, 'I Bolted, myself, when I was
your age — frequent — and as a boy, I've been among a many Bol-
ters; but I never see your bolting equal yet, Pip, and it's a mercy
you ain't Bolted dead.'

My sister made a dive at me, and fished me up by the hair: say-
ing nothing more than the awful words, 'You come along and be
dosed.'

Some medical beast had revived Tar-water in those days as a
fine medicine, and Mrs. Joe always kept a supply of it in the cup-
board ; having a belief in its virtues correspondent to its nastiness.
At the best of times, so much of this elixir was administered to
me as a choice restorative, that I was conscious of going about,
smelling like a new fence. On this particular evening, the urgency
of my case demanded a pint of this mixture, which was poured
down my throat, for my greater comfort, while Mrs. Joe held
my head under her arm, as a boot would be held in a boot-jack.
Joe got off with half a pint; but was made to swallow that (much
to his disturbance, as he sat slowly munching and meditating be-
fore the fire), 'because he had had a turn.' Judging from myself.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 11

I should say he certainly had a turn afterwards, if he had none
before.

Conscience is a dreadful thing when it accuses man or boy; but
when, in the case of a boy, that secret burden co-operates with
another secret burden down the leg of his trousers, it is (as I can
testify) a great punishment. The guilty knowledge that I was go-
ing to rob Mrs. Joe — I never thought I was going to rob Joe, for
I never thought of any cf the housekeeping property as his — united
to the necessity of always keeping one hand on my bread-and-butter
as I sat, or when I was ordered about the kitchen on any small
errand, almost drove me out of my mind. Then, as the marsh
winds made the fire glow and flare, I thought I heard the voice
outside, of the man with the iron on his leg who had sworn me to
secrecy, declaring that he couldn't and wouldn't starve until to-
morrow, but must be fed now. At other times, I thought, What
if the young man who was with so much difficulty restrained from
imbruing his hands in me, should yield to a constitutional im-
patience, or should mistake the time, and should think himself
accredited to my heart and liver to-night, instead of to-morrow!
If ever anybody's hair stood on end with terror, mine must have
done so then. But, perhaps, nobody's ever did?

It was Christmas Eve, and I had to stir the pudding for next
day, with a copper-stick, from seven to eight by the Dutch clock.
I tried it with the load upon my leg (and that made me think afresh
of the man with the load on his leg) , and found the tendency of ex-
ercise to bring the bread-and-butter out at m.y ankle, quite unman-
ageable. Happily I slipped away, and deposited that part of m}'
conscience in my garret bedroom.

'Hark!' said I, when I had done my stirring, and was taking
a final warm in the chimney-corner before being sent up to bed;
'was that great guns, Joe?^

'Ah!' said Joe. 'There's another conwict off.*

'What does that mean, Joe?' said I.

Mrs. Joe, who always took explanations upon herself, said snap-
pishly, 'Escaped. Escaped.' Administering the definition like
Tar-water.

While Mrs. Joe sat with her head bending over her needlework,
I put my mouth into the forms of sa3ang to Joe, 'What's a con-

12 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

vict?' Joe put his mouth into the forms of returning such a highly
elaborate answer, that I could make out nothing of it but the
single word, Tip.'

'There was a conwict off last night/ said Joe, aloud, 'after sun-
set-gun. And they fired warning of him. And now it appears.;
they're firing warning of another.'

W^<?'5 firing?' said I.

'Drat that boy,' interposed my sister, frowning at me over her ■
work, 'what a questioner he is. Ask no questions, and you'll be
told no lies.'

It was not very polite to herself, I thought, to imply that I
should be told lies by her, even if I did ask questions. But she
never was polite, unless there was company.

At this point, Joe greatly augmented my curiosity by taking
the utmost pains to open his mouth very wide and to put it into
the form of a word that looked to me like 'sulks.' Therefore, I
naturally pointed to Mrs. Joe, and put my mouth into the form of
saying 'her'? But Joe wouldn't hear of that at all, and again
opened his mouth very wide, and shook the form of a most
emphatic word out of it. But I could make nothing of the
word.

'Mrs. Joe,' said I, as a last resort, 'I should like to know — if you
wouldn't much mind — where the tiring comes from?'

'Lord bless the boy!' exclaimed my sister, as if she didn't quite
mean that, but rather the contrary. 'From the Hulks!'

'Oh-h! ' said I, looking at Joe. 'Hulks! '

Joe gave a reproachful cough, as much as to say, 'Well, I told
you so.'

'And please what's Hulks?' said I.

'That's the way with this boy!' exclaimed my sister, pointing
me out with her needle and thread, and shaking her head at me.
'Answer him one question, and he'll ask you a dozen directly.
Hulks are prison-ships, right 'cross th' meshes.' We always used
that name for marshes in our country.

'I wonder who's put into prison-ships, and why they're put
there?' said I, in a general way, and with quiet desperation.

It was too much for Mrs. Joe, who immediately rose. 'I tell you
what, young fellow,' said she, 'I didn't bring you up by hand to

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 13

badger people's lives out. It would be blame to me, and not praise,
if I had. People are put in the Hulks because they murder, and be-
cause they rob, and forge, and do all sorts of bad; and they always
begin by asking questions. Now, you get along to bed!'

I was never allowed a candle to light me to bed, and, as I went
upstairs in the dark, with my head tinghng — from Mrs. Joe's
thimble having played the tambourine upon it, to accompany her
last words — I felt fearfully sensible of the great convenience that
the hulks were handy for me. I was clearly on my way there.
I had begun by asking questions, and I was going to rob Mrs.
Joe.

Since that time, which is far enough away now, I have often
thought that few people know what secrecy there is in the young
under terror. No matter how unreasonable the terror, so that it be
terror. I was in mortal terror of the young man who wanted my
heart and liver; I was in mortal terror of my interlocutor with the
iron leg; I was in mortal terror of myself, from whom an awful
promise had been extracted; I had no hope of deliverance through
my all-powerful sister, who repulsed me at every turn; I am afraid
to think of what I might have done on requirement, in the secrecy
of my terror.

If I slept at all that night, it was only to imagine myself drift-
ing down the river on a strong springtide, to the Hulks ; a ghostl}^
pirate calling out to me through a speaking-trumpet, as I passed the
gibbet-station, that I had better come ashore and be hanged there
at once, and not put it off. I was afraid to sleep, even if I had been
inclined, for I knew that at the first faint dawn of morning I must
rob the pantry. There was no doing it in the night, for there was
no getting a light by easy friction then; to have got one, I must
have struck it out of flint and steel, and have made a noise like
the very pirate himself rattling his chains.

As soon as the great black velvet pall outside my little window
was shot with grey, I got up and went downstairs; every board
upon the way, and every crack in every board, calling after me,
^Stop thief!' and 'Get up, Mrs. Joe!' In the pantry, which was
far more abundantly supplied than usual, owing to the season, I
was very much alarmed, by a hare hanging up by the heels, whom
I rather thought I caught, when my back was half turned, winking.

14 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

I had no time for verification, no time for selection, no time for
anything, for I had no time to spare. I stole some bread, some rind
of cheese, about half a jar of mincemeat (which I tied up in my
pocket-handkerchief with my last night's slice), some brandy from
a stone bottle (which I decanted into a glass bottle I had secretly
used for making that intoxicating fluid, Spanish-liquorice-water, up
in my room; diluting the stone bottle from a jug in the kitchen
cupboard), a meat bone with very little on it, and a beautiful
round compact pork pie. I was nearly going away without the
pie, but I was tempted to mount upon a shelf, to look what it
was that was put away so carefully in a covered earthenware dish
in a corner, and I found it was the pie, and I took it, in the hope
that it was not intended for early use, and would not be missed for
some time.

There was a door in the kitchen communicating with the forge;
I unlocked and unbolted that door, and got a file from among Joe's
tools. Then I put the fastenings as I had found them, opened the
door at which I had entered when I ran home last night, shut it,
and ran for the misty marshes.

CHAPTER III

It was a rimy morning, and very damp. I had seen the damp lying
on the outside of my little window, as if some goblin had been cry-
ing there all night, and using the window for a pocket-handkerchief.
Now I saw the damp lying on the bare hedges and spare grass, l;ke
a coarser sort of spiders' webs; hanging itself from twig to twig
and blade to blade. On every rail and gate, wet lay clammy, and
the marsh-mist was so thick, that the wooden finger on the post
directing people to our village — a direction which they never
accepted, for they never came there — was invisible to me until
I was quite close under it. Then, as I looked up at it, while it
dripped, it seemed to my oppressed conscience like a phantom
devoting me to the Hulks.

The mist was heavier yet when I got out upon the marshes, so
that instead of my running at everything, everything seemed to

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 15

run at me. This was very disagreeable to a guilty mind. The
gates and dykes and banks came bursting at me through the
mist, as if they cried as plainly as could be, 'A boy with Somebody-
else's pork pie! Stop him!' The cattle came upon me with like
suddenness, staring out of their eyes, and steaming out of their
Inostrils, 'Holloa, young thief!' One black ox, with a white cravat
on — who even had to my awakened conscience something of a
clerical air — fixed me so obstinately with his eyes, and moved
his blunt head round in such an accusatory manner as I moved
i round, that I blubbered out to him, 'I couldn't help it, sir! It
wasn't for myself I took it!' Upon which he put down his head,
blew a cloud of smoke out of his nose, and vanished with a kick-
up of his hind-legs and a flourish of his tail.

All this time I was getting on towards the river; but however
fast I went, I couldn't warm my feet, to which the damp cold
seemed riveted, as the iron was riveted to the leg of the man I was
running to meet. I knew my way to the Battery, pretty straight,
for I had been down there on a Sunday with Joe, and Joe sitting
on an old gun, had told me that when I was 'prentice to him,
regularly bound, we would have such Larks there! However,
in the confusion of the mist, I found myself at last too far to the
right, and consequently had to try back along the river-side, on
the bank of loose stones above the mud and the stakes that staked
the tide out. Making my way along here with all despatch, I had
just crossed a ditch which I knew to be very near the Battery,
and had just scrambled up the mound beyond the ditch, when I
saw the man sitting before me. His back was towards me, and
he had his arms folded, and was nodding forward, heavy with sleep.

I thought he would be more glad if I camxe upon him with his
breakfast, in that unexpected manner, so I went forward softly
and touched him on the shoulder. He instantly jumped up, and
it was not the same man, but another man!

And yet this man was dressed in coarse grey, too, and had a
great iron on his leg, and was lame, and hoarse, and cold, and was
everything that the other man was; except that he had not the
same face, and had a fiat, broad-brimmed, low-crowned felt hat
on. All this I saw in a moment, for I had only a moment to see
it in: he swore an oath at me, made a hit at me — it was a round,

16 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

weak blow that missed me and almost knocked himself down, for
it made him stumble — and then he ran into the mist, stumbling
twice as he went, and I lost him.

'It's the young man!' I thought, feeling my heart shoot as I
identified him. I dare say I should have felt a pain in my liver,
too, if I had known where it was.

I was soon at the Battery, after that, and there was the right
man — hugging himself and limping to and fro, as if he had never
all night left off hugging and limping — waiting for me. He was
awfully cold, to be sure. I half expected to see him drop down
before my face and die of deadly cold. His eyes looked so awfully
hungry, too, that when I handed him the file and he laid it
down on the grass, it occurred to me he would have tried to eat it,
if he had not seen my bundle. He did not turn me upside down,
this time, to get at what I had, but left me right side upv/ards
while I opened the bundle and emptied my pockets.

'WTiat's in the bottle, boy?' said he.

'Brandy,' said I.

He was already handing mincemeat down his throat in the most
curious manner — more like a man who was putting it away some-
where in a violent hurry, than a man who was eating it — but he
left off to take some of the liquor. He shivered all the while
so violently, that it was quite as much as he could do to keep
the neck of the bottle between his teeth, without biting it off.

'I think you have got the ague,' said I.

'I'm much of your opinion, boy,' said he.

'It's bad about here,' I told him. 'You've been lying out on the
meshes, and they're dreadful aguish. Rheumatic too.'

'I'll eat my breakfast afore they're the death of me,' said he.
'I'd do that if I was going to be strung up to that there gallows
as there is over there, directly afterwards. I'll beat the shivers,
/'ll bet you.'

He was gobbling mincemeat, meat bone, bread, cheese, and
pork pie, all at once: staring distrustfully while he did so at
the mist all round us, and often stopping — even stopping his
jaws — to listen. Some real or fancied sound, some clink upon
the river or breathing of beast upon the marsh, now gave him a
start, and he said, suddenly:

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 17

^You're not a deceiving imp? You brought no one with you?'

'No, sir! No!'

'Nor giv' no one the office to follow you?'

'No!'

'Well,' said he, 'I believe you. You'd be but a fierce young
hound indeed, if at your time of life you could help to hunt a
wretched warmint, hunted as near death and dunghill as this
j poor wretched warmint is!'

Something clicked in his throat as if he had works in him like
a clock, and was going to strike. And he smeared his ragged
rough sleeve over his eyes.

Pitying his desolation, and watching him as he gradually settled
down upon the pie, I made bold to say, 'I am glad you enjoy it.'

'Did you speak?'

'I said, I was glad you enjoyed it.'

'Thankee, my boy. I do.'

I had often watched a large dog of ours eating his food; and
I now noticed a decided similarity between the dog's way of
eating, and the man's. The man took strong sharp sudden bites,
just like the dog. He swallowed, or rather snapped up, every
mouthful, too soon and too fast; and he looked sideways here
and there while he ate, as if he thought there was danger in
every direction of som.ebody's coming to take the pie away. He
was altogether too unsettled in his mind over it, to appreciate it
comfortably, I thought, or to have anybody to dine with him,
without making a chop with his jaws at the visitor. In all of
which particulars he was very like the dog.

'I am afraid you won't leave any of it for him,' said I, timidly;
after a silence during which I had hesitated as to the politeness
of making the remark. 'There's no more to be got where that came
from.' It was the certainty of this fact that impelled me to offer
the hint.

'Leave any for him? Who's him?' said my friend, stopping
in his crunching of pie-crust.

'The young man. That you spoke of. That was hid with you.'

'Oh ah!' he returned, with something like a gruff laugh. 'Him?
Yes, yes! He don't want no wittles.'

'I thought he looked as if he did,' said I.

18 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

The man stopped eating, and regarded me with the keenest.
scrutiny and the greatest surprise.

Tooked? When?'

'Just now.'

'Where?'

'Yonder,' said I, pointing; 'over there, where I found him
nodding asleep, and thought it was you.'

He held me by the collar and stared at me so, that I began
to think his first idea about cutting my throat had revived.

'Dressed like you, you know, only with a hat,' I explained,
trembling; 'and — and' — I was very anxious to put this delicately
— 'and with — the same reason for wanting to borrow a file.
Didn't you hear the cannon last night?'

'Then, there was firing!' he said to himself.

'I wonder you shouldn't have been sure of that,' I returned, 'for
we heard it up at home, and that's further away, and we were
shut in besides.'

'Why, see now!' said he. 'When a man's alone on these flats,
with a light head and a light stomach, perishing of cold and want,
he hears nothin' all night, but guns firing, and voices calling.
Hears? He sees the soldiers, with their red coats lighted up by
the torches carried afore, closing in round him. Hears his num-
ber called, hears himself challenged, hears the rattle of the mus-
kets, hears the orders "Make ready! Present! Cover him steady
men!" and is laid hands on — and there's nothin'! Why, if I see
one pursuing party last night — coming up in order, Damn 'em,
with their tramp, tramp, — I see a hundred. And as to firing!
Why, I see the mist shake with the cannon, arter it was broad
day. — But this man'; he had said all the rest as if he had for-
gotten my being there; 'did you notice anything in him?'

'He had a badly bruised face,' said I, recalling what I hardly
knew I knew.

'Not here?' exclaimed the man, striking his left cheek merci-
lessly, with the flat of his hand.

'Yes, there!'

'Where is he?' He crammed what little food was left, into the
breast of his grey jacket. 'Show me the way he went. I'll pull

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 19

him down, like a blood-hound. Curse this iron on my sore leg I
Give us hold of the file, boy!'

I indicated in what direction the mist had shrouded the other
man, and he looked up at it for an instant. But he was down
on the rank wet grass, filing at his iron like a madman, and not
minding me or minding his own leg, which had an old chafe upon
it and was bloody, but which he handled as roughly as if it had
no more feeling in it than the file. I was very much afraid of him
again, now that he had worked himself into this fierce hurry,
and I was likewise very much afraid of keeping away from home
any longer. I told him I must go, but he took no notice, so I
thought the best thing I could do was to slip off. The last I saw
of him, his head was bent over his knee and he was working hard
at his fetter, muttering impatient imprecations at it and his leg.
The last I heard of him, I stopped in the mist to listen, and the
file was still going.

CHAPTER IV

I FULLY expected to find a Constable in the kitchen waiting to
take me up. But not only was there no Constable there, but no
discovery had yet been made of the robbery. Mrs. Joe was pro-
digiously busy in getting the house ready for the festivities of
the day, and Joe had been put upon the kitchen door-step to
keep him out of the dust-pan — an article into which his destiny
always led him, sooner or later, when my sister was vigorously
reaping the floors of her establishment.

'And where the deuce ha' you been?' was Mrs. Joe's Christmas
salutation, when I and my conscience showed ourselves.

I said I had been down to hear the Carols. Ah! well!' observed
Mrs. Joe. 'You might ha' done worse.' Not a doubt of that I
thought.

Terhaps if I warn't a blacksmith's wife, and (what's the same
thing) a slave with her apron never off, / should have been to
hear the Carols,' said Mrs. Joe. 'I'm rather partial to Carols my-
self, and that's the best of reasons for my never hearing any.'

Joe, who had ventured into the kitchen after me as the dust-

20 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

pan had retired before us, drew the back of his hand across his
nose with a conciliatory air, when Mrs. Joe darted a look at
him, and, when her eyes were withdrawn, secretly crossed his
two forefingers, and exhibited them to me, as our token that Mrs.
Joe was in a cross temper. This was so much her normal state,
that Joe and I would often, for weeks together, be, as to our
fingers, like monumental Crusaders as to their legs.

We were to have a superb dinner, consisting of a leg of
pickled pork and greens, and a pair of roast stuffed fowls. A
handsome mince-pie had been made yesterday morning (which
accounted for the mince-meat not being missed), and the pudding
was already on the boil. These extensive arrangements occa-
sioned us to be cut off unceremoniously in respect of break-
fast; 'for I ain't,' said Mrs. Joe, 'I ain't a-going to have no
formal cramming and busting and washing up now, with what
I've got before me, I promise you!'

So, we had our slices served out, as if we were two thousand
troops on a forced march instead of a man and a boy at home;
and we took gulps of milk and water, with apologetic counten-
ances, from a jug on the dresser. In the meantime, Mrs. Joe
put clean white curtains up, and tacked a new flowered-flounce
across the wide chimney to replace the old one, and uncovered
the little state parlour across the passage, which was never un-
covered at any other time, but passed the rest of the year in
a cool haze of silver paper, which even extended to the four
little white crockery poodles on the mantelshelf, each with a
black nose and a basket of flowers in his mouth, and each the
counterpart of the other. Mrs. Joe was a very clean housekeeper,
but had an exquisite art of making her cleanliness more uncom-
fortable and unacceptable than dirt itself. Cleanliness is next to
Godliness, and some people do the same by their religion.

My sister having so much to do, was going to church vicariously;
that is to say, Joe and I were going. In his working clothes,
Joe was a well-knit characteristic-looking blacksmith ; in his holi-
day clothes, he was more like a scarecrow in good circumstances,
than anything else. Nothing that he wore then, fitted him or seemed
to belong to him; and everything that he wore then, grazed him.
On the present festive occasion he emerged from his room, when

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 21

the blithe bells were going, the picture of misery, in a full suit of
Sunday penitentials. As to me, I think my sister must have had
some general idea that I was a young offender whom an Accoucheur
Policeman had taken up (on my birthday) and delivered over to
her, to be dealt with according to the outraged majesty of the law.
I was always treated as if I had insisted on being born in opposition
to the dictates of reason, religion, and morality, and against the dis-
suading arguments of my best friends. Even when I was taken to
have a new suit of clothes, the tailor had orders to make them like
a kind of Reformatory, and on no account to let me have the free
use of my limbs.

Joe and I going to church, therefore, must have been a moving
spectacle for compassionate minds. Yet, what I suffered outside,
was nothing to what I underwent within. The terrors that had as-
sailed me whenever Mrs. Joe had gone near the pantry, or out of
the room, were only to be equalled by the remorse with which my
mind dwelt on what my hands had done. Under the weight of my
wicked secret, I pondered whether the Church would be powerful
enough to shield me from the vengeance of the terrible young man,
if I divulged to that establishment. I conceived the idea that the
time when the banns were read and when the clergyman said, 'Ye
are now to declare it ! ' would be the time for me to rise and pro-
pose a private conference in the vestry. I am far from being sure
that I might not have astonished our small congregation by re-
sorting to this extreme measure, but for its being Christmas Day
and no Sunday.

Mr. Wopsle, the clerk at church, was to dine with us; and Mr.
Hubble, the wheelwright, and Mrs. Hubble; and Uncle Pumble-
chook (Joe's uncle, but Mrs. Joe appropriated him), who was a
well-to-do corn-chandler in the nearest town, and drove his own
chaise-cart. The dinner hour was half-past one. When Joe and I
got home, we found the table laid, and Mrs. Joe dressed, and the
dinner dressing, and the front door unlocked (it never was at any
other time) for the company to enter by, and everything most
splendid. And still, not a word of the robbery.

The time came, without bringing with it any relief to my feelings,
and the company came. Mr. Wopsle. united to a Roman nose and
a large shining bald forehead, had a deep voice which he was un •

22 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

commonly proud of; indeed it was understood among his acquaint-
ance that if you could only give him his head, he would read the
clergyman into fits; he himself confessed that if the Church was
'thrown open/ meaning to competition, he would not despair of
making his mark in it. The Church not being 'thrown open,' he
was, as I have said, our clerk. But he punished the Amens tremen-
dously; and when he gave out the psalm — always giving the whole
verse — he looked all round the congregation first, as much as to
say, 'You have heard our friend overhead; oblige me with your
opinion of this style!'

I opened the door to the company — making believe that it was
a habit of ours to open that door — and I opened it first to Mr.
Wopsle, next to Mr. and Mrs. Hubble, and last of all to Uncle
Pumblechook. N. B. / was not allowed to call him uncle, under the
severest penalties.

'Mrs. Joe,' said Uncle Pumblechook; a large hard-breathing
middle-aged slow man, with a mouth like a fish, dull staring eyes,
and sandy hair standing upright on his head, so that he looked as
if he had just been all but choked, and had that moment come to;
'I have brought you as the compliments of the season — I have
brought you. Mum, a bottle of sherry wine — and I have brought
you. Mum, a bottle of port wine.'

Every Christmas Day he presented himself, as a profound nov-
elty with exactly the same words, and carrying the two bottles like
dumb-bells. Every Christmas Day, Mrs. Joe replied, as she now
replied, 'Oh, Un — cle Pum — ble — chook! This is kind!' Every
Christmas Day he retorted, as he now retorted, 'It's no more than
your merits. And now are you all bobbish, and how's Sixpennorth
of halfpence?' meaning me.

We dined on these occasions in the kitchen, and adjourned, for
the nuts and oranges and apples, to the parlour; which was a
change very like Joe's change from his working clothes to his Sun-
day dress. My sister was uncommonly lively on the present occa-
sion, and indeed was generally more gracious in the society of
Mrs. Hubble than in other company. I remember Mrs. Hubble as
a little curly sharp-edged person in sky-blue, who held a conven-
tionally juvenile position, because she had married Mr. Hubble —
I don't know at what remote period — when she was much younger

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 23

than he. I remember Mr. Hubble as a tough high-shouldered
stooping old man, of a sawdusty fragrance, with his legs extraor-
dinarily wide apart: so that in my short days I always saw some
miles of open country between them when I met him coming up
the lane.

Among this good company I should have felt myself, even if I
hadn't robbed the pantry, in a false position. Not because I was
squeezed in at an acute angle of the tablecloth, with the table in
my chest, and the Pumblechookian elbow in my eye, nor because
I was not allowed to speak (I didn't want to speak), nor because
I was regaled with the scaly tips of the drumsticks of the fowls,
and with those obscure corners of pork of which the pig, when liv-
ing, had had the least reason to be vain. No; I should not have
minded that if they would only have left me alone. But they
wouldn't leave me alone. They seemed to think the opportunity
lost, if they failed to point the conversation at me, every now and
then, and stick the point into me. I might have been an unfortunate
little bull in a Spanish arena, I got so smartingly touched up by
these moral goads.

It began the moment we sat down to dinner. Mr. Wopsle said
grace with theatrical declamation — as it now appears to me, some-
thing like a religious cross of the Ghost in Hamlet with Richard
the Third — and ended with the very proper aspiration that we
might be truly grateful. Upon which my sister fixed me with her
eye, and said, in a low reproachful voice, 'Do you hear that? Be
grateful.'

'Especially,' said Mr. Pumblechook, 'be grateful, boy, to them
which brought you up by hand.'

Mrs. Hubble shook her head, and contemplating me with a
mournful presentiment that I should come to no good, asked, 'Why
is it that the young are never grateful?' This moral mystery
seemed too much for the company until Mr. Hubble tersely solved
it by saying, 'Naterally wicious.' Everybody then murmured
*True!' and looked at me in a particularly unpleasant and personal
manner.

Joe's station and influence were something feebler (if possible)
when there was company, than when there was none. But he al-
ways aided and comforted me when he could, in some way of his

24 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

own, and he alv/ays did so at dinner-time by giving me gravy, if
there were any. There being plenty of gravy to-day, Joe spooned
into my plate, at this point, about half a pint.

A little later on in the dinner, Mr. Wopsle reviewed the sermon
with some severity, and intimated — in the usual hypothetical case
of the Church being 'thrown open' — what kind of sermon he would
have given them. After favouring them with some heads of that
discourse, he remarked that he considered the subject of the day's
homily, ill-chosen; which was the less excusable, he added, when
there were so many subjects 'going about.'

'True again,' said Uncle Pumblechook. 'You've hit it, sir! Plenty
of subjects going about, for them that know how to put salt upon
their tails. That's what's wanted. A man needn't go far to find a
subject, if he's ready with his salt-box.' Mr. Pumblechook added,
after a short interval of reflection, 'Look at Pork alone. There's
a subject! If you want a subject, look at Pork!'

*True, sir. Many a moral for the young,' returned Mrs. Wopsle;
and I knew he was going to lug me in, before he said it; 'might be
deduced from that text.'

('You listen to this,' said my sister to me, in a severe paren-
thesis.)

Joe gave me some more gravy.

'Swine,' pursued Mr. Wopsle, in his deepest voice, and pointing
his fork at my blushes, as if he were mentioning my christian
name; 'Swine were the companions of the prodigal. The gluttony
of Swine is put before us, as an example to the young.' (I thought
this pretty well in him who had been praising up the pork for being
so plump and juicy.) 'What is detestable in a pig, is more detest-
able in a boy.'

'Or girl,' suggested Mr. Hubble.

'Of course, or girl, Mr. Hubble,' assented Mr. Wopsle, rather ir-
ritably, 'but there is no girl present.'

'Besides,' said Mr. Pumblechook, turning sharp on me, 'think
what you've got to be grateful for. If you'd been born a
Squeaker — '

'He was, if ever a child was,' said my sister, most emphatically,

Joe gave me some more gravy.

'Well, but I mean a four-footed Saueaker,' said Mr. Pumble-

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 25

chook. 'If you had been born such, would you have been here now?
Not you — '

'Unless in that form/ said Mr. Wopsle, nodding towards the dish.

'But I don't mean in that form, sir,' returned Mr. Pumblechook,
who had an objection to being interrupted; 'I mean, enjoying him-
self with his eiders and betters, and improving himself with their
conversation, and rolling in the lap of luxury. Would he have been
doing that? No, he wouldn't. And what would have been your
destination?' turning on me again. 'You would have been disposed
of for so many shillings, according to the market price of the art-
icle, and Dunstable the butcher would have come up to you as you
lay in your straw, and he would have whipped you under his left
arm, and with his right he would have tucked up his frock to get a
penknife from out of his waistcoat-pocket, and he would have shed
your blood and had your life. No bringing up by hand then. Not
a bit of it!'

Joe offered me more gravy, which I was afraid to take.

'He was a world of trouble to you, ma'am,' said Mrs. Hubble,
commiserating my sister.

'Trouble?' echoed my sister, 'trouble?' And then entered on a
fearful catalogue of the illnesses I had been guilty of, and all the
acts of sleeplessness I had committed, and all the high places I had
tumbled from, and all the low places I had tumbled into, and all
the injuries I had done myself, and all the times she had wished me
in my grave, and I had contumaciously refused to go there.

I think the Romans must have aggravated one another very
much, with their noses. Perhaps, they became the restless
people they were, in consequence. Anyhow, Mr. Wopsle's Ro-
man nose so aggravated me, during the recital of my misdemean-
ours, that I should have liked to pull it until he howled. But, all
I had endured up to this time, was nothing in comparison with the
awful feelings that took possession of me when the pause was
broken which ensued upon my sister's recital, and in which pause
everybody had looked at me (as I felt painfully conscious) with in-
dignation and abhorrence.

'Yet,' said Mr. Pumblechook, leading the company gently back
to the theme from which they had strayed, 'Pork — regarded as
biled — is rich, too; ain't it?'

26 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

^Have a little brandy, uncle,' said my sister.

0 Heavens, it had come at last! He would find it was weak, he
would say it was weak, and I was lost! I held tight to the leg of the
table, under the cloth, with both hands, and awaited my fate.

My sister went for the stone bottle, came back with the stone
bottle, and poured his brandy out: no one else taking any. The
wretched man trifled with his glass — took it up, looked at it
through the light, put it down — prolonged my misery. All this
time Mrs. Joe and Joe were briskly clearing the table for the pie
and pudding.

1 couldn't keep my eyes off him. Always holding tight by the leg
of the table with my hands and feet, I saw the miserable creature
finger his glass playfully, take it up, smile, throw his head back,
and drink the brandy off. Instantly afterwards, the company were
seized with unspeakable consternation, owing to his springing to his
feet, turning round several times in an appalling spasmodic whoop-
ing-cough dance, and rushing out at the door ; he then became vis-
ible through the window, violently plunging and expectorating,
making the most hideous faces, and apparently out of his mind.

I held on tight, while Mrs. Joe and Joe ran to him. I didn't know
how I had done it, but I had no doubt I had murdered him some-
how. In my dreadful situation, it was a relief when he was brought
back, and, surveying the company all round as if they had dis-
agreed with him, sank down into his chair with the one significant
gasp, 'Tar!'

I had filled up the bottle from the tar-water jug. I knew he
would be worse by-and-by. I moved the table, like a Medium of
the present day, by the vigour of my unseen hold upon it.

Tar!' said my sister in amazement. 'Why, how ever could Tar
come there?'

But, Uncle Pumblechook, who was omnipotent in that kitchen,
wouldn't hear the word, wouldn't hear of the subject, imperiously
waved it all away with his hand, and asked for hot gin-and-water.
My sister, who had begun to be alarmingly meditative, had to em-
ploy herself actively in getting the gin, the hot water, the sugar,
and the lemon-peel, and mixing them. For the time at least, I was
saved. I still held on to the leg of the table, but clutched it now
with the fervour of gratitude.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 27

By degrees, I became calm enough to release my grasp, and par-
take of pudding. Mr. Pumblechook partook of pudding. All par-
took of pudding. The course terminated, and Mr. Pumblechook
had begun to beam under the genial influence of gin-and-water. 1
began to think I should get over the day, when my sister said to
Joe, 'Clean plates — cold.'

I clutched the legs of the table again immediately, and pressed
it to my bosom as if it had been the companion of my youth and
friend of my soul. I foresaw what was coming, and I felt that this
time I really was gone.

'You must taste,' said my sister, addressing the guests with her
best grace. 'You must taste, to finish with, such a delightful and
delicious present of Uncle Pumblechook's!'

Must they! Let them not hope to taste it!

'You must know,' said my sister, rising, 'it's a pie; a savoury
pork pie.'

The company murmured their compliments. Uncle Pumble-
chook, sensible of having deserved well of his fellow-creatures,
said — quite vivaciously, all things considered — 'Well, Mrs. Joe,
we'll do our best endeavours; let us have a cut at this same pie.'

My sister went out to get it. I heard her steps proceed to the
pantry. I saw Mr. Pumblechook balance his knife. I saw re-
av/akening appetite in the Roman nostrils of Mr. Wopsle. I heard
Mr. Hubble remark that 'a bit of savoury pork pie would lay
atop of anything you could mention, and do no harm,' and I heard
Joe say, 'You shall have some, Pip.' I never have been absolutely
certain whether I uttered a shrill yell of terror, merely in spirit, or
in the bodily hearing of the company. I felt that I could bear no
more, and that I must run away. I released the leg of the table,
and ran for my life.

But I ran no further than the house door, for there I ran head
foremost into a party of soldiers with their muskets: one of whom
held out a pair of handcuffs to me, saying, 'Here you are, look
sharp, come on!'

28 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

CHAPTER V

The apparition of a file of soldiers ringing down the butt-ends of
their loaded muskets on our door-step, caused the dinner-party to
rise from table in confusion, and caused Mrs. Joe, re-entering the
kitchen empty-handed, to stop short and stare, in her wondering
lament of 'Gracious goodness gracious me, what's gone — with the —
pie!'

The sergeant and I were in the kitchen wheii Mrs. Joe stood
staring; at which crisis I partially recovered the use of my senses.
It was the sergeant who had spoken to me, and he was now looking
round at the company, with his handcuffs invitingly extended to-
wards them in his right hand, and his left on my shoulder.

'Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen,' said the sergeant, 'but as I
have mentioned at the door to this smart young shaver' (which he
hadn't), 'I am on a chase in the name of the king, and I want the
blacksmith.'

'And pray, what might you want with him?' retorted my sister,
quick to resent his being wanted at all.

'Missis,' returned the gallant sergeant, 'speaking for myself, I
should reply, the honour and pleasure of his fine wife's acquaint-
ance; speaking for the king, I answer, a little job done.'

This was received as rather neat in the sergeant; insomuch that
Mr. Pumblechook cried audibly, 'Good again!'

'You see, blacksmith,' said the sergeant, who had by this time
picked out Joe with his eye, 'we have had an accident with these,
and I find the lock of one of 'em goes wrong, and the coupling
don't act pretty. As they are wanted for immediate service, will
you throw your eye over them?'

Joe threw his eye over them, and pronounced that the job would
necessitate the lighting of his forge fire, and would take nearer
two hours than one. 'Will it? Then will you set about it at once,
blacksmith?' said the off-hand sergeant, 'as it's on his Majesty's
service. And if my men can bear a hand anywhere, they'll make
themselves useful.' With that he called to his men, who came
trooping into the kitchen one after another, and piled their arms

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 29

in a corner. And then they stood about, as soldiers do; now, with
their hands loosely clasped before them; now, resting a knee or
a shoulder; now, easing a belt or a pouch; now, opening the door
to spit stiffly over their high stocks, out into the yard.

All these things I saw without then knowing that I saw them, for
I was in an agony of apprehension. But, beginning to perceive
that the handcuffs were not for me, and that the military had so
far got the better of the pie as to put it in the background, I col-
lected a little more of my scattered wits.

'Would you give me the Time!' said the sergeant, addressing
himself to Mr. Pumblechook, as to a man whose appreciative
powers justified the inference that he was equal to the time.

'It's just gone half-past two.'

That's not so bad,' said the sergeant, reflecting; 'even if I was
forced to halt here nigh two hours, that'll do. How far might you
call yourselves from the marshes, hereabouts? Not above a mile,
T reckon?'

'Just a mile,' said Mrs. Joe.

'That'll do. We begin to close in upon 'em about dusk. A
little before dusk, my orders are. That'll do.'

'Convicts, sergeant!' asked Mr. Wopsle, in a matter-of-course
way.

'Ay!' returned the sergeant, 'two. They're pretty well known
to be out on the marshes still, and they won't try to get clear of
em before dusk. Anybody here seen anything of any such game?'

Everybody, myself excepted, said no, with confidence. Nobody
thought of me.

'Well,' said the sergeant, 'they'll find themselves trapped in a
circle, I expect, sooner than they count on. Now, blacksmith! If
you're ready, his Majesty the King is.'

Joe had got his coat and waistcoat and cravat off, and his leather
apron on and passed into the forge. One of the soldiers opened its
wooden windows, another lighted the fire, another turned to at the
bellows, the rest stood round the blaze, vv^hich was soon roaring.
Then Joe began to hammer and clink, hammer and clink, and we
all looked on.

The interest of the impending pursuit not only absorbed the gen-
eral attention, but even made my sister liberal. She drew a pitcher

30 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

of beer from the cask, for the soldiers, and invited the sergeant to
take a glass of brandy. But Mr. Pumblechook said sharply, 'Give
him wine, Mum. Ill engage there's no Tar in that!' so, the ser-
geant thanked him and said that, as he preferred his drink with-
out the tar, he would take wine, if it was equally convenient. When
it was given hirn, he drank his Majesty's health and compliments
of the season, and took it all at a mouthful and smacked his lips.

'Good stuff, eh, sergeant?' said Mr. Pumblechook.

Til tell you something,' returned the sergeant; 'I suspect that
stuff's of your providing.'

Mr. Pumblechook, with a fat sort of laugh, said 'Ay, ay? Why?'

'Because,' returned the sergeant, clapping him on the shoulder,
'you're a man that knows what's what.'

'D'ye think so?' said Mr. Pumblechook, with his former laugh.
/Have another glass!'

'With you. Hob and nob,' returned the sergeant. ^The top of
mine to the foot of yours — the foot of yours to the top of mine —
Ring once, ring twice — the best tune on the Musical Glasses! Your
health. ]May you live a thousand years, and never be a worse judge
of the right sort than you are at the present moment of your life! '

The sergeant tossed off his glass again and seemed quite ready for
another glass. I noticed that Mr. Pumblechook in his hospitality
appeared to forget that he had made a present of the wine, but took
the bottle from Mrs. Joe and had all the credit of handing it about
in a gush of joviality. Even I got some. And he was so very free
of the wine that he even called for the other bottle, and handled
that about with the same liberality, when the first was gone.

As I watched them while they all stood clustering about the
forge, enjoying themselves so much, I thought what terrible good
sauce for a dinner my fugitive friend on the marshes was. They
had not enjoyed themselves a quarter so much, before the enter-
tainment was brightened with the excitement he furnished. And
now, when they were all in lively anticipation of 'the two villains'
being taken, and when the bellows seemed to roar for the fugitives,
the fire to flare for them, the smoke to hurry away in pursuit of
them, Joe to hammer and clink for them, and all the murky shad-
ows on the wall to shake at them in menace as the blaze rose and
sank and the red-hot sparks dropped and died, the pale afternoon

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 31

outside almost seemed in my pitying young fancy to have turned
pale on their account, poor wretches.

At last, Joe's job was done, and the ringing and roaring stopped.
As Joe got on his coat, he mustered courage to propose that some
of us should go down with the soldiers and see what came of the
hunt. Mr. Pumblechook and Mr. Hubble declined, on the plea of
a pipe and the ladies' society: but Mr. Wopsle said he would go,
if Joe would. Joe said he was agreeable, and would take me, if
Mrs. Joe approved. We never should have got leave to go, I am
sure, but for Mrs. Joe's curiosity to know all about it and how it
ended. As it was, she merely stipulated, 'If you bring the boy back
with his head blown to bits by a musket, don't look to me to put
it together again.'

The sergeant took a polite leave of the ladies, and parted from
]\Ir. Pumblechook as from a comrade; though I doubt if he were
quite as fully sensible of that gentleman's merits under arid con-
ditions, as when something moist was going. His men resumed
their muskets and fell in. Mr. Wopsle, Joe, and I, received strict
charge to keep in the rear, and to speak no word after we reached
the marshes. When we were all out in the raw air and were steadily
moving towards our business, I treasonably whispered to Joe, 'I
hope, Joe, we shan't find them.' And Joe whispered, to me, 'I'd give
a shilling if they had cut and run, Pip.'

We were joined by no stragglers from the village, for the weather
was cold and threatening, the way dreary, the footing bad, dark-
ness coming on, and the people had good fires in-doors, and were
keeping the day. A few faces hurried to glowing windows and
looked after us, but none came out. We passed the finger-post, and
held straight on to the churchyard. There, we were stopped a few
minutes by a signal from the sergeant's hand, while two or three
of his men dispersed themselves among the graves, and also ex-
amined the porch. They came in again without finding anything,
and then we struck out on the open marshes, through the gate at
the side of the churchyard. A bitter sleet came rattling against us
here on the east wind, and Joe took me on his back.

Now that we were out upon the dismal wilderness where they
little thought I had been within eight or nine hours, and had seen
both men hiding, I considered for the first time, with great dread,

32 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

if we should come upon them, would my particular convict suppose
that it was I who had brought the soldiers there? He had asked
me if I was a deceiving imp, and he said I should be a fierce young
hound if I joined the hunt against him. Would he believe that I
was both imp and hound in treacherous earnest, and had betrayed
him?

It was of no use asking myself this question now. There I was,
on Joe's back, and there was Joe beneath me, charging at the
ditches like a hunter, and stimulating Mr. Wopsle not to tumble
on his Roman nose, and to keep up with us. The soldiers were in
front of us, extending into a pretty wide line with an interval be-
tween man and man. We were taking the course I had begun with,
and from which I had diverged into the mist. Either the mist was
not out again yet, or the wind had dispelled it. Under the low red
glare of sunset, the beacon, and the gibbet, and the mound of the
Battery, and the opposite shore of the river, were plain, though all
of a watery lead colour.

With my heart thumping like a blacksmith at Joe's broad shoul-
der, I looked all about for any sign of the convicts. I could see
none, I could hear none. Mr. Wopsle had greatly alarmed me more
than once, by his blowing and hard breathing; but I knew the
sounds by this time, and could disassociate them from the object
of pursuit. I got a dreadful start, when I thought I heard the file
still going; but it was only a sheep bell. The sheep stopped in their
eating and looked timidly at us; and the cattle, their heads turned
from the wind and sleet, stared angrily as if they held us responsible
for both annoyances; but, except these things, and the shudder of
the dying day in every blade of grass, there was no break in the
bleak stillness of the marshes.

The soldiers were moving on in the direction of the old Battery,
and we were moving on a little way behind them, when, all of a
sudden, we all stopped. For, there had reached us, on the wings
of the wind and rain, a long shout. It was repeated. It was at a
distance towards the east, but it was long and loud. Nay, there
seemed to be two or more shouts raised together — if one might
judge from a confusion in the sound.

To this effect the sergeant and the nearest men were speaking

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 33

under their breath, when Joe and I came up. After another mo-
ment's Hstening, Joe (who was a good judge) agreed, and Mr.
Wopsle (who was a bad judge) agreed. The sergeant, a decisive
man, ordered that the sound should not be answered, but that the
course should be changed, and that his men should make towards
it 'at the double.' So we started to the right (where the East was),
and Joe pounded away so wonderfully, that I had to hold on tight
to keep my seat.

It was a run indeed now, and what Joe called, in the only two
words he spoke all the time, 'a Winder.' Down banks and up
banks, and over gates, and splashing into dykes, and breaking
among coarse rushes: no man cared where he went. As we came
nearer to the shouting, it became more and more apparent that it
was made by more than one voice. Sometimes, it seemed to stop
altogether, and then the soldiers stopped. When it broke out again,
the soldiers made for it at a greater rate than ever, and we after
them. After a while, we had so run it down, that we could hear one
voice calling 'Murder!' and another voice, 'Convicts! Runaways!
Guard! This way for the runaway convicts!' Then both voices
would seem to be stifled in a struggle, and then would break out
again. And when it had come to this, the soldiers ran like deer,
and Joe too.

The sergeant ran in first, when we had run the noise quite down,
and two of his men ran in close upon him. Their pieces were cocked
and levelled when we all ran in.

'Here are both men!' panted the sergeant, struggling at the
bottom of a ditch. 'Surrender, you two! and confound you for two
wild beasts ! Come asunder ! '

Water was splashing, and mud was flying, and oaths were being
sworn, and blows were being struck, when some more men went
down into the ditch to help the sergeant, and dragged out, separ-
ately, my convict and the other one. Both were bleeding and pant-
ing and execrating and struggling ; but of course I knew them both
directly.

'Mind!' said my convict, wiping blood from his face with his
ragged sleeves, and shaking torn hair from his fingers; 7 took him!
/ give him up to you ! Mind that ! '

34 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

'It's not much to be particular about/ said the sergeant; 'it'll
do you small good, my man, being in the same plight yourself.
Handcuffs there!'

'I don't expect it to do me any good. I don't want it to do me
more good than it does now,' said my convict, with a greedy laugh.
'I took him. He knows it. That's enough for me.'

The other convict was livid to look at, and, in addition to the
old bruised left side of his face, seemed to be bruised and torn all
over. He could not so much as get his breath to speak, until they
were both separately handcuffed, but leaned upon a soldier to
keep himself from falling.

Take notice, guard — he tried to murder me,' were his first words.

'Tried to murder him?' said my convict, disdainfully. 'Try, and
not do it? I took him, and giv' him up; that's what I done. I not
only prevented him getting off the marshes, but I dragged him
here — dragged him this far on his way back. He's a gentleman, if
you please, this villain. Now, the Hulks has got its gentleman
again, through me. Murder him? Worth my while, too, to mur-
der him, when I could do worse and drag him back! '

The other one still gasped, 'He tried — he tried — to murder me.
Bear — bear witness.'

'Lookee here!' said my convict to the sergeant. 'Single-handed
I got clear of the prison-ship; I made a dash and I done it. I
could ha' got clear of these death-cold flats likewise — look at my
leg: you won't find much iron on it — if I hadn't made discovery
that he was here Let him go free? Let him profit by the means as
I found out? Let him make a tool of me afresh and again? Once
more? No, no, no. If I had died at the bottom there'; and he made
an emphatic swing at the ditch with his manacled hands; 'I'd have
held to him with that grip, that you should have been safe to find
him in my hold.'

The other fugitive, who was evidently in extreme horror of his
companion, repeated, 'He tried to murder me. I should have been a
dead man if you had not come up.'

'He lies!' said my convict, with fierce energy. 'He's a liar born,
and he'll die a liar. Look at his face; ain't it written there? Let
him turn those eyes of his on me. I defy him to do it.' .

The other, with an effort at a scornful smile — which could not.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 35

however, collect the nervous working of his mouth into any set
expression, looked at the soldiers, and looked about at the marshes
and at the sky, but certainly did not look at the speaker.

'Do you see him?' pursued my convict. 'Do you see what a
villain he is? Do you see those grovelling and wandering eye's?
That's how he looked when we were tried together. He never
looked at me.'

The other, always working and working his dry lips and tnniing
his eyes restlessly about him far and near, did at last turn them
for a moment on the speaker, with the words, 'You are not much
to look at,' and with a half-taunting glance at the bound aands.
At that point, my convict became so frantically exasperated, that
he would have rushed upon him but for the interposition of the
soldiers. 'Didn't I tell you,' said the other convict then, 'that he
would murder me, if he could?' And any one could see that he
shook with fear, and that there broke out upon his Hps curious
white flakes, like thin snow.

'Enough of this parley,' said the sergeant. 'Light those torches.'

As one of the soldiers, who carried a basket in lieu of a gun,
went down on his knee to open it, my convict looked round him
for the first time, and saw me. I had alighted from Joe's back on
the brink of the ditch when we came up, and had not moved since.
I looked at him eagerly when he looked at me, and slightly moved
my hands and shook my head. I had been waiting for him to see
me, that I might try to assure him of my innocence. It was not at
all expressed to me that he even comprehended my intention, for he
gave me a look that I did not understand, and it all passed in a
moment. But if he had looked at me for an hour or for a day, I
could not have remembered his face ever afterwards, as having
been more attentive.

The soldier with the basket soon got a light, and lighted three
or four torches, and took one himself and distributed the others.
It had been almost dark before, but now it seemed quite dark, and
soon afterwards very dark. Before we departed from that spot,
four soldiers standing in a ring, fired twice into the air. Presently
we saw other torches kindled at some distance behind it, and
others on the marshes on the opposite bank of the river. 'All right,'
said the sergeant. 'March.'

36 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

We had not gone far when three cannon were fired ahead of
us with a sound that seemed to burst something inside my ear.
'You are expected on board/ said the sergeant to my convict; Hhey
know you are coming. Don't struggle, my man. Close up here.'

The two were kept apart, and each walked surrounded by a
separate guard. I had hold of Joe's hand now, and Joe carried one
of the torches. Mr. Wopsle had been for going back, but Joe was
resolved to see it out, so we went on with the party. There was a
reasonably good path now, mostly on the edge of the river, with
a divergence here and there where a dyke came, with a miniature
windmill on it and a muddy sluice-gate. When I looked round,
I could see the other Hghts coming in after us. The torches we
carried, dropped great blotches of fire upon the track, and I could
see those, too, lying smoking and flaring. I could see nothing else
but black darkness. Our lights warmed the air about us with their
pitchy blaze, and the two prisoners seemed rather to like that, as
they limped along in the midst of the muskets. We could not go
fast, because of their lameness; and they were so spent, that two
or three times we had to halt while they rested.

After an hour or so of this travelling, we came to a rough wooden
hut and a landing-place. There was a guard in the hut, and they
challenged, and the sergeant answered. Then, we went into the
hut, where there was a smell of tobacco and whitewash, and 3
bright fire, and a lamp, and a stand of muskets, and a drum, and
a low wooden bedstead, like an overgrown mangle without the
machinery, capable of holding about a dozen soldiers all at once.
Three or four soldiers who lay upon it in their great-coats, were
not much interested in us, but just lifted their heads and took a
sleepy stare, and then lay down again. The sergeant made some
kind of report, and some entry in a book, and then the convict
whom I call the other convict was drafted off with his guard, to go
on board first.

My convict never looked at me, except that once. W^hile we
stood in the hut, he stood before the fire looking thoughtfully at it,
or putting up his feet by turns upon the hob, and looking thought-
fully at them as if he pitied them for their recent adventures.
Suddenly, he turned to the sergeant, and remarked:

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 37

'I wish to say something respecting this escape. It may prevent
some persons laying under suspicion alonger me.'

'You can say what you like,' returned the sergeant, standing
coolly looking at him with his arms folded, 'but you have no call
to say it here. You'll have opportunity enough to say about it,
and hear about it, before it's done with, you know.'

'I know, but this is another pint, a separate matter. A man can't
starve ; at least 1 can't. I took some wittles, up at the willage over
yonder — where the church stands a'most out on the marshes.'

'You mean stole,' said the sergeant.

And I'll tell you where from. From the blacksmith's.'

'Halloa!' said the sergeant, staring at Joe.

'Halloa, Pip!' said Joe, staring at me.

'It was some broken wittles — that's what it was — and a dram
of liquor, and a pie.'

'Have you happened to miss such an article as a pie, blacksmith?'
asked the sergeant confidentially.

'My wife did, at the very moment when you came in. Don't
you know, Pip?'

'So,' said my convict, turning his eyes on Joe in a moody man-
ner, and without the least glance at me; 'so you're the blacksmith,
are you? Then I'm sorry to say, I've eat your pie.'

'God knows you're welcome to it — so far as it was ever mine,'
returned Joe, with a saving remembrance of Mrs. Joe. 'We don't
know what you have done, but we wouldn't have you starved to
death for it, poor miserable fellow-creatur. — Would us, Pip?'

The something that I noticed before, clicked in the man's
throat again, and he turned his back. The boat had returned, and
his guard were ready, so we followed him to the landing-place made
of rough stakes and stones, and saw him put into the boat, which
was rowed by a crew of convicts like himself. No one seemed
surprised to see him, or interested in seeing him, or glad to see him,
or sorry to see him, or spoke a word, except that somebody in the
boat growled as if to dogs, 'Give v/ay, you!' which was the signal
for the dip of the oars. By the light of the torches, we saw the
black Hulk lying out a little way from the mud of the shore, like
a wicked Noah's ark. Cribbed and barred and moored by massive

38 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

rusty chains, the prison-ship seemed in my young eyes to be ironed
like the prisoners. We saw the boat go alongside, and we saw him
taken up the side and disappear. Then the ends of the torches
were flung hissing into the water, and went out, as if it were all
over with him.

CHAPTER VI

My state of mind regarding the pilfering from which I had been
so unexpectedly exonerated, did not impel me to frank disclosure;
but I hope it had some dregs of good at the bottom of it.

I do not recall that I felt any tenderness of conscience in refer-
ence to Mrs. Joe, when the fear of being found out was lifted off me.
But I loved Joe — perhaps for no better reason in those early days
than because the dear fellow let me love him — and, as to him, my
inner self was not so easily composed. It was much upon my mind
(particularly when I first saw him looking about for his file) that
I ought to tell Joe the whole truth. Yet I did not, and for the
reason that I mistrusted that if I did, he would think me worse than
I was. The fear of losing Joe's confidence, and of thenceforth
sitting in the chimney-corner at night staring drearily at my for
ever lost companion and friend, tied up my tongue. I morbidly
represented to myself that if Joe knew it, I never afterwards could
see him at the fireside feeling his fair whisker, without thinking that
he was meditating on it. That, if Joe knew it, I never afterwards
could see him glance, however casually, at yesterday's meat or pud-
ding when it came on to-day's table without thinking that he was
debating whether I had been in the pantry. That, if Joe knew it,
and at any subsequent period of our joint domestic life remarked
that his beer was flat or thick, the conviction that he suspected Tar
in it, would bring a rush of blood to my face. In a word, I was too
cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly
to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong. I had had no intercourse
with the world at that time, and I imitated none of its many in-
habitants who act in this manner. Quite an untaught genius, I
made the di«;covery of the line of action for myself.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 39

As I was sleepy before we were far away from the prison-ship,
Joe took me on his back again and carried me home. He must
have had a tiresome journey of it, for Mr. Wopsle, being knocked
up, was in such a very bad temper that if the Church had been
thrown open, he would probably have excommunicated the whole
expedition, beginning with Joe and myself. In his lay capacity, he
persisted in sitting down in the damp to such an insane extent, that
when his coat was taken off to be dried at the kitchen fire, the cir-
cumstantial evidence on his trousers would have hanged him if it
had been a capital offence.

By that time, I was staggering on the kitchen floor like a little
drunkard, through having been newly set upon my feet, and
through having been fast asleep, and through waking in the heat
and lights and noise of tongues. As I came to myself (with the
aid of a heavy thump between the shoulders, and the restorative
exclamation 'Yah! Was there ever such a boy as this!' from my
sister). I found Joe telling them about the convict's confession,
and all the visitors suggesting different ways by which he had got
into the pantry. Mr. Pumblechook made out, after carefully sur-
veying the premises that he had first got upon the roof of the forge
and had then got upon the roof of the house, and had then let
himself down the kitchen chimney by a rope made of his bedding
cut into strips; and as Mr. Pumblechook was very positive and
drove his own chaise-cart — over everybody — it was agreed that it
must be so. Mr. Wopsle, indeed, wildly cried out 'No!' with the
feeble malice of a tired man ; but, as he had no theory, and no coat
on, he was unanimously set at nought — not to mention his smok-
ing hard behind, as he stood with his back to the kitchen fire to
draw the damp out: which was not calculated to inspire confidence.

This was all I heard that night before my sister clutched me, as
a slumberous offence to the company's eyesight, and assisted me
up to bed with such a strong hand that I seemed to have fifty boots
on, and to be dangling them all against the edges of the stairs. My
state of mind, as I have described it, began before I was up in the
morning, and lasted long after the subject had died out, and had
ceased to be mentioned saving on exceptional occasions.

40 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

CHAPTER VII

At the time when I stood in the churchyard, reading the family
tombstones, I had just enough learnmg to be able to spell them out.
My construction even of their simple meaning was not very correct,
for I read 'wife of the Above' as a complimentary reference to my
father's exaltation to a better world; and if any one of my deceased
relations had been referred to as 'Below,' I have no doubt I should
have formed the worst opinions of that member of the family.
Neither were my notions of the theological positions to which my
Catechism bound me, at all accurate; for, I have a lively remem-
brance that I supposed my declaration that I was to 'walk in the
same all the days of my life,' laid me under an obligation always
to go through the village from our house in one particular direction,
and never to vary it by turning down by the wheelwright's or up
by the mill.

When I was old enough, I was to be apprenticed to Joe, and until
I could assume that dignity I was not to be what Mrs. Joe called
Tompeyed,' or (as I render it) pampered. Therefore, I was not
only odd-boy about the forge, but if any neighbour happened to
want an extra boy to frighten birds, or pick up stones, or do any
such job, I was favoured with the employment. In order, however,
that our superior position might not be compromised thereby, a
money-box was kept on the kitchen mantel-shelf, into which it was
publicly made known that all my earnings were dropped. I have
an impression that they were to be contributed eventually towards
the liquidation of the National Debt, but I know I had no hope of
any personal participation in the treasure.

Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt kept an evening school in the village;
that is to say, she was a ridiculous old woman of limited means and
unlimited infirmity, who used to go to sleep from six to seven every
evening, in the society of youth who paid twopence per week each,
for the improving opportunity of seeing her do it. She rented a
small cottage, and Mr. Wopsle had the room upstairs, where we
students used to overhear him reading aloud in a most dignified
and terrific manner, and occasionally bumping on the ceiling.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 41

There was a fiction that Mr. Wopsle 'examined' the scholars, once
a quarter. What he did on those occasions was to turn up his cuffs,
stick up his hair, and give us Mark Antony's oration over the body
of Caesar. This was always followed by Collins's Ode on the Pas-
sions, wherein I particularly venerated Mr. Wopsle as Revenge,
throwing his blood-stained sword in thunder down, and taking the
War-denouncing trumpet with a withering look. It was not with
me then, as it was in later life, when I fell into the society of the
Passions, and compared them with Collins and Wopsle, rather to
the disadvantage of both gentlemen.

Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt, besides keeping this Educational In-
stitution kept in the same room — a little general shop. She had
no idea what stock she had, or what the price of anything in it was;
but there was a little greasy memorandum book kept in a drawer,
which served as a Catalogue of Prices, and by this oracle Biddy ar-
ranged all the shop transactions. Biddy was Mr. Wopsle's great-
aunt's grand-daughter; I confess myself quite unequal to the
working out of the problem, what relation she was to Mr. Wopsle.
She was an orphan like myself; like me, too, had been brought up
by hand. She was most noticeable, I thought, in respect of her
extremities for, her hair always wanted brushing, her hands al-
ways wanted washing, and her shoes always wanted mending and
pulling up at the heel. This description must be received with a
week-day limitation. On Sundays she went to church elaborated.

Much 01 my unassisted self, and more by the help of Biddy than
of Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt, I struggled through the alphabet as if
it had been a bramble-bush; getting considerably worried and
scratched by every letter. After that, I fell among those thieves,
the nine figures, who seemed every evening to do something new
to disguise themselves and baffle recognition. But, at last I began,
in a purblind groping way to read, write, and cipher, on the very
smallest scale.

One night, I was sitting in the chimney-corner with my slate, ex-
pending great efforts on the production of a letter to Joe. I think
it must have been a full year after our hunt upon the marshes, for
it was a long time after, and it was winter and a hard frost. With
an alphabet on the hearth at my feet for reference, I contrived in
an hour or two to orint and smear this epistle:

42 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

'mI deEr jo i opE U r krWitE wEll i opE i shAl soN B
haBelL 4 2 teeDge U JO aN theN wE shOrl b sO glOdd aN
wEn i M preNgtD 2 u JO woT larX an blEvE ME inFxn
PiP."

There was no indispensable necessity for my communicating
with Joe by letter, inasmuch as he sat beside me and we were alone.
But, I delivered this written communication (slate and all) with
my own hand, and Joe received it, as a miracle of erudition,

'I say, Pip, old chap!' cried Joe, opening his blue eyes wide,
'what a scholar you are! Ain't you?'

'I should like to be,' said I, glancing at the slate as he held it:
with a misgiving that the writing was rather hilly.

'Why, here's a J,' said Joe, 'and a O equal to anythink! Here's
a J and a O, Pip, and a J-0, Joe.'

I had never heard Joe read aloud to any greater extent than this
monosyllable, and I had observed at church last Sunday, when I
accidentally held our Prayer-Book upside down, that it seemed to
suit his convenience quite as well as if it had been all right. Wish-
ing to embrace the present occasion of finding out whether in teach-
ing Joe, I should have to begin quite at the beginning, I said, 'Ah !
But read the rest, Joe.'

'The rest, eh, Pip?' said Joe, looking at it with a slowly searching
eye. 'One, two, three. Why, here's three Js, and three Os, and
three J-0, Joes, in it, Pip!'

I leaned over Joe, and, with the aid of my forefinger, read him
the whole letter.

'Astonishing!' said Joe, when I had finished. 'You are a
scholar.'

'How do you spell Gargery, Joe?' I asked him, with a modest
patronage.

'I don't spell it at all,' said Joe.

'But supposing you did?'

Tt can't be supposed,' said Joe. 'Tho' I'm on-common fond of
reading, too.'

'Are you, Joe?'

'On-common. Give me,' said Joe, 'a good book, or a good newS'
paper, and sit me down afore a good fire, and I ask no better.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 43

Lord!' he continued, after rubbing his knees a little, 'when you do
come to a J and a O, and says you, "Here, at last, is a J-0, Joe,"
how interesting reading is!'

I derived from this last, that Joe's education, like Steam, was
yet in its infancy. Pursuing the subject, I inquired:

'Didn't you ever go to school, Joe, when you were as little as
me?'

'No, Pip.'

'Why didn't you ever go to school, Joe, when you were as little
as me?'

'Well, Pip,' said Joe, taking up the poker, and settling himself
to his usual occupation when he was thoughtful, of slowly raking
the fire between the lower bars: 'I'll tell you. My father, Pip, he
were given to drink, and when he were overtook with drink, he
hammered away at my mother most onmerciful. It were a'most
the only hammering he did, indeed, 'xcepting at myself. And he
hammered at me with a wigour only to be equalled by the wigour
with which he didn't hammer at his anwil. — You're a-listening and
understanding, Pip?'

'Yes, Joe.'

' 'Consequence, my mother and me we ran away from my father
several times; and then my mother she'd go out to work, and she'd
say, "Joe," she'd say, "now, please God, you shall have some
schooling, child," and she'd put me to school. But my father were
that good in his heart that he couldn't abear to be without us. So,
he'd come with a most tremenjous crowd and make such a row at
the doors of the houses where we was, that they used to be obligated
to have no more to do with us and to give us up to him. And then
he took us home and hammered us. Which, you see, Pip,' said
Joe, pausing in his meditative raking of the fire, and looking at me,
Vere a drawback on my learning.'

'Certainly, poor Joe!'

'Though mind you, Pip,' said Joe, with a judicial touch or two
of the poker on the top bar, 'rendering unto all their doo, and main-
taining equal justice betwixt man and man, my father were that
good in his hart, don't you see?'

I didn't see; but I didn't say so.

44 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

Well!' Joe pursued, 'somebody must keep the pot a-biling, Pip,
or the pot won't bile, don't you know?'

I saw that, and said so.

' 'Consequence, my father didn't make objections to my going
to work; so I went to work at my present calling, which were his
too, if he would have followed it, and I worked tolerable hard, I
assure you, Pip. In time I were able to keep him, and I kept him
till he went off in a purple leptic fit. And it were my intentions
to have had put upon his tombstone that Whatsume'er the failings
on his part, Remember reader he were that good in his hart.'

Joe recited this couplet with such manifest pride and careful
perspicuity, that I asked him if he had made it himself.

'I made it,' said Joe, 'my own self. I made it in a moment. It
was like striking out a horseshoe complete, in a single blow. I never
was so much surprised in all my life — couldn't credit my own ed — ■
to tell you the truth, hardly believed it were my own ed. As I was
saying, Pip, it were my intentions to have had it cut over him; but
poetry costs money cut it how you will, small or large, and it were
not done. Not to mention bearers, all the money that could be
spared were wanted for my mother. She were in poor, elth, and
quite broke. She waren't long of following, poor soul, and her
share of peace come round at last.'

Joe's blue eyes turned a little watery; he rubbed, first one of
them, and then the other, in a most uncongenial and uncomfortable
manner, with the round knob on the top of the poker.

'It were but lonesome then,' said Joe, 'living here alone, and I
got acquainted with your sister. Now, Pip' ; Joe looked firmly at
me, as if he knew I was not going to agree with him; 'your sister
h a fine figure of a woman.'

I could not help looking at the fire, in an obvious state of doubt.

'Whatever family opinions, or whatever the world's opinions, on
that subject may be, Pip, your sister is,' Joe tapped the top bar
with the poker after every word following, 'a — fine — figure — of —
a- -woman! '

I could think of nothing better to say than 'I am glad you think
so. joe.'

'So am L' returned Joe, catching me up. '/ am glad I think

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 45

o, Pip. A little redness, or a little matter of Bone, here or there,
vhat does it signify to Me?'

I sagaciously observed, if it didn't signify to him, to whom did
t signify?

'Certainly!' assented Joe. That's it. You're right, old chap!
IVhen I got acquainted with your sister, it were the talk how she
^as bringing you up by hand. Very kind of her too, all the folks
5aid, and 1 said, along with all the folks. As to you,' Joe pursued,
with a countenance expressive of seeing something very nasty in-
deed: if you could have been aware how small and flabby and
mean you was, dear me, you'd have formed the most contemptible
opinions of yourself! '

Not exactly rehshing this, I said, 'Never mind me, Joe.'

'But I did mind you, Pip,' he returned, with tender simplicity.
When I offered to your sister to keep company, and be asked in
church, at such times as she was willing and ready to come to the
forge, I said to her, 'And bring the poor little child. God bless
the poor little child,'' I said to your sister, 'there's room for kirn
at the forge!'"

I broke out crying and begging pardon, and hugged Joe round
the neck: who dropped the poker to hug me, and to say, 'Ever the
best of friends; ain't us, Pip? Don't cry, old chap!'

When this little interruption was over, Joe resumed :

'Well, 3^ou see, Pip, and here we are! That's about where it
lights; here we are! Now, when you take me in hand in my learn-
ing, Pip (and I tell you beforehand I am awful dull, most awful
dull) , Mrs. Joe mustn't see too much of what we're up to. It must
be done, as I may say, on the sly. And why on the sly? I'll tell
you why, Pip.'

He had taken up the poker again; without which, I doubt if
he could have proceeded in his demonstration.

'Your sister is given to government.'

'Given to government, Joe?' I was startled, for I had some
shadowy idea (and I am afraid I must add, hope) that Joe had
divorced her in favour of the Lords of the Admiralty, or Treasury.

'Given to government,' said Joe. 'Which I meantersay the gov-
ernment of you and myself.'

46 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

'Oh!'

And she ain't over partial to having scholars on the premises,'
Joe continued, 'and in partickler would not be over partial to my
being a scholar, for fear as I might rise. Like a sort of rebel,
don't you see?'

I was going to retort with an inquiry, and had got as far as
Why — ' when Joe stopped me.

'Stay a bit. I know what you're a-going to say, Pip; stay a bit!
I don't deny that your sister comes the Mo-gul over us, now and
again. I don't deny that she do throw us back-falls, and that she
do drop down upon us heavy. At such times as when your sister is
on the Ram-page, Pip,' Joe sank his voice to a whisper and glanced
at the door, 'candour compels fur to admit that she is a Buster.'

Joe pronounced this word, as if it began with at least twelve
capital Bs.

'Why don't I rise? That was your observation when I broke
it off, Pip?'

'Yes, Joe.'

'Well,' said Joe, passing the poker into his left hand, that he
might feel his whisker; and I had no hope of him whenever he took
to that placid occupation; 'your sister's a master-mind. A master-
mind.'

'W^hat's that?' I asked, in some hope of bringing him to a stand.
But, Joe was readier with his definition than I had expected, and
completely stopped me by arguing circularly, and answering with
a fixed look, 'Her.'

'And I ain't a master-mind,' Joe resumed, when he had unfixed
his look, and got back to his whisker. 'And last of all, Pip — and
this I want to say very serous to you, old chap — I see so much
in my poor mother, of a woman drudging and slaving and break-
ing her honest hart and never getting no peace in her mortal days,
that I'm dead afeerd of going wrong in the way of not doing what's
right by a woman, and I'd fur rather of the two go wrong the
t'other way, and be a little ill-conwenienced myself. I wish it
was only me that got put out, Pip ; I wish there warn't no Tickler
for you, old chap; I wish I could take it all on myself; but this is
the up-and-down-and-straight on it, Pip, and I hope you'll over-
look shortcomings.'

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 47

Young as I was, I believe that I dated a new admiration of Joe
from that night. We were equals afterwards, as we had been be-
fore; but, afterwards at quiet times when I sat looking at Joe and
thinking about him, I had a new sensation of feeling conscious
that I was looking up to Joe in my heart.

'However,' said Joe, rising to replenish the fire; 'here's the
Dutch-clock a-working himself up to being equal to strike Eight
of 'em, and she's not come home yet! I hope Uncle Pumble-
chook's mare mayn't have set a fore-foot on a piece o' ice, and
gone down.'

Mrs. Joe made occasional trips with Uncle Pumblechook on
market-days, to assist him in buying such household stuffs and
goods as required a woman's judgment; Uncle Pumblechook being
a bachelor and reposing no confidences in his domestic servant.
This was market-day, and Mrs. Joe was out on one of these ex-
peditions.

Joe made the fire and swept the hearth, and then we went to
the door to listen for the chaise-cart. It was a dry cold night,
and the wind blew keenly, and the frost was white and hard. A
man would die tonight of lying out on the marshes, I thought.
And then I looked at the stars, and considered how awful it would
be for a man to turn his face up to them as he froze to death, and
see no help or pity in all the glittering multitude.

'Here comes the mare,' said Joe, 'ringing like a peal of bells!'

The sound of her iron shoes upon the hard road was quite musi-
cal, as she came along at a much brisker trot than usual. We got
a chair out, ready for Mrs. Joe's alighting, and stirred up the fire
that they might see a bright window, and took a final survey of the
kitchen that nothing might be out of its place. When we had
completed these preparations, they drove up, wrapped to the eyes.
Mrs. Joe was soon landed, and Uncle Pumblechook was soon down
too, covering the mare with a cloth, and we were soon all in the
kitchen carrying so much cold air with us that it seemed to drive
all the heat out of the fire.

'Now,' said Mrs. Joe, unwrapping herself with haste and excite-
ment, and throwing her bonnet back on her shoulders, where it
hung by the strings: 'if this boy ain't grateful this night, he never
will be!'

48 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

I looked as grateful as any boy possibly could, who was wholly
uninformed why he ought to assume that expression.

'It's only to be hoped,' said my sister, 'that he won't be Pomp-
eyed. But I have my fears.'

'She ain't in that line, Mum,' said Mr. Pumblechook. 'She
knows better.'

She? I looked at Joe, making the motion with my lips and eye-
brows, 'She?' Joe looked at me, making the motion with his lips
and eyebrows, 'She?' My sister catching him in the act, he drew
the back of his hand across his nose with his usual conciliatory air
on such occasions, and looked at her.

'Well?' said my sister, in her snappish way. 'What are you
staring at? Is the house a-fire?'

' — Which some individual,' Joe politely hinted, 'mentioned she.*

'And she is a she, I suppose?' said my sister. 'Unless you call
Miss Havisham a he. And I doubt if even you'll go as far as that.'

'Miss Havisham up town?' said Joe.

'Is there any Miss Havisham down town?' returned my sister.
'She wants this boy to go and play there. And of course he's go-
ing. And he had better play there,' said my sister, shaking her
head at me as an encouragement to be extremely light and sportive,
^or I'll work him.'

I had heard of Miss Havisham up town — everybody for miles
around, had heard of Miss Havisham up town — as an immensely
rich and grim lady who lived in a large and dismal house barri-
caded against robbers, and who led a life of seclusion.

'Well to be sure! ' said Joe, astounded. 'I wonder how she comes
to know Pip!'

'Noodle!' cried my sister. 'Who said she knew him?'

'Which some individual,' Joe again politely hinted, 'mentioned
that she wanted him to go and play there.'

'And couldn't she ask Uncle Pumblechook if he knew of a boy
to go and play there? Isn't it just barely possible that Uncle
Pumblechook may be a tenant of hers, and that he may sometimes
— we won't say quarterly or half-yearly, for that would be requir-
ing too much of you — but sometimes — go there to pay his rent?
And couldn't she then ask Uncle Pumblechook if he knew of a
boy to go and play there? And couldn't Uncle Pumblechook, be-

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 49

ing always considerate and thoughtful for us — though you may
not think it, Joseph,' in a tone of the deepest reproach, as if he
were the most callous of nephews, 'then mention this boy, standing
Prancing there' — which I solemnly declare I was not doing — 'that
I have for ever been a willing slave to?'

'Good again!' cried Uncle Pumblechook. 'Well put! Prettily
pointed! Good indeed! Now Joseph, you know the case.'

'No, Joseph,' said my sister, still in a reproachful manner, while
Joe apologetically drew the back of his hand across and across his
nose, 'you do not yet — though you may not think it — know the
case. You may consider that you do, but you do not, Joseph.
For you do not know that Uncle Pumblechook, being sensible that
for anything we can tell, this boy's fortune may be made by going
to Miss Havisham's, has offered to take him into town to-night in
his own chaise-cart, and to keep him to-night, and to take him with
his own hands to Miss Havisham's to-morrow morning. And Lor-
a-mussy me!' cried my sister, casting off her bonnet in sudden
desperation, 'here I stand talking to mere Mooncalfs, with Uncle
Pumblechook waiting, and the mare catching cold at the door,
and the boy grimed with crock and dirt from the hair of his head
to the sole of his foot!'

With that she pounced on me, like an eagle on a lamb, and my
face was squeezed into wooden bowls in sinks, and my head was
put under taps of waterbutts, and I was soaped, and kneaded, and
towelled, and thumped, and harrowed, and rasped, until I really
was quite beside myself. (I may here remark that I suppose my-
self to be better acquainted than any living authority, with the
ridgy effect of a wedding-ring, passing unsympathetically over the
human countenance.)

When my ablutions were completed, I was put into clean linen
of the stiffest character, like a young penitent into sackcloth, and
was trussed up in my tightest and fearfullest suit. I was then
delivered over to Mr. Pumblechook, who formally received me as
if he were the Sheriff, and who let off upon me the speech that I
knew he had been dying to make all along: 'Boy, be forever grate-
ful to all friends, but especially unto them which brought you up
by hand ! '

'Good-bye, Joel'

60 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

'God bless you, Pip, old chap! '

I had never parted from him before, and what with my feelings
and what with soap-suds, I could at first see no stars from the
chaise-cart. But they twinkled out one by one, without throw-
ing any light on the questions why on earth I was going to play
at Miss Havisham's, and what on earth I was expected to play at.

CHAPTER VIII

Mr. Pumblechook's premises in the High Street of the market-
town, were of a peppercorny and farinaceous character, as the
premises of a corn-chandler and seedsman should be. It ap-
peared to me that he must be a very happy man indeed, to have
so many little drawers in his shop: and I wondered when I peeped
into one or two on the lower tiers, and saw the tied-up brown
paper packets inside, whether the flower-seeds and bulbs ever
wanted of a fine day to break out of those jails, and bloom.

It was in the early morning after my arrival that I entertained
this speculation. On the previous night, I had been sent straight
to bed in an attic with a sloping roof, which was so loW in the
corner where the bedstead was, that I calculated the tiles as being
within a foot of my eyebrows. In the same early morning, I dis-
covered a singular affinity between seeds and corduroys. Mr.
Pumblechook wore corduroys, and so did his shopman ; and some-
how, there was a general air and flavour about the corduroys, so
much in the nature of seeds, and a general air and flavour about
the seeds, so much in the nature of corduroys, that I hardly knew
which was which. The same opportunity served me for noticing
that Mr. Pumblechook appeared to conduct his business by looking
across the street at the saddler, who appeared to transact his busi-
ness by keeping his eye on the coachmaker, who appeared to get
on in life by putting his hands in his pockets and contemplating
the baker, who in his turn folded his arms and stared at the grocer,
who stood at his door and yawned at the chemist. The watch-
maker, always poring over a little desk with a magnifying glass at
his eye, and always inspected by a group in smock-frocks poring

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 51

over him through the glass of his shop-window, seemed to be about
the only person in the High Street whose trade engaged his atten-
tion.

]\Ir, Pumblechook and I breakfasted at eight o'clock in the
parlour behind the shop, while the shopman took his mug of tea
and hunch of bread-and-butter on a sack of peas in the front
premises. I considered Mr. Pumblechook wretched company. Be-
sides being possessed by my sister's idea that a mortifying and pen-
itential character ought to be imparted to my diet — besides giving
me as much crumb as possible in combination with as little butter,
and putting such a quantity of warm water into my milk that it
would have been more candid to have left the milk out altogether
— his conversation consisted of nothing but arithmetic. On my
politely bidding him Good-morning, he said, pompously, 'Seven
times nine, boy?' And how should / be able to answer, dodged in
that way, in a strange place, on an empty stomach! I was hungry,
but before I had swallowed a morsel, he began a running sum that
lasted all through the breakfast. 'Seven?' 'And four?' 'And
eight?' 'And six?' 'And two?' 'And ten?' And so on. And
after each figure was disposed of, it was as much as I could do to
get a bite or a sup, before the next came ; while he sat at his ease
guessing nothing, and eating bacon and hot roll, in (if I may be
allowed the expression) a gorging and gormandising manner.

For such reasons I was very glad when ten o'clock came and
we started for Miss Havisham's; though I was not at all at my
ease regarding the manner in which I should acquit myself under
that lady's roof. Within a quarter of an hour we came to Miss
Havisham's house, which was of old brick, and dismal, and had
a great many iron bars to it. Some of the windows had been
walled up ; of those that remained, all the lower were rustily barred
There was a courtyard in front, and that was barred; so, we had
to wait, after ringing the bell, until some one should come to open
it. While we waited at the gate, I peeped in (even then Mr.
Pumblechook said, 'And fourteen?' but I pretended not to hear
him), and saw that at the side of the house there was a large brew-
ery. No brewing was going on in it, and none seemed to have
gone on for a long time.

A window was raised, and a clear voice demanded, 'What name?'

52 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

To which my conductor replied, Tumblechook.' The voice re-
turned, 'Quite right,' and the window was shut again, and a young
lady came across the court-yard, with keys in her hand.

'This,' said Mr. Pumblechook, 'is Pip.'

'This is Pip, is it?' returned the young lady, who was very pretty
and seemed very proud; 'come in, Pip.'

Mr. Pumblechook was coming in also, when she stopped him
with the gate.

^Oh!' she said. 'Did you wish to see Miss Havisham?'

Tf Miss Havisham wished to see me,' returned Mr. Pumble-
chook, discomfited.

'Ah!' said the girl; 'but you see she don't.'

She said it so finally, and in such an undiscussible way, that Mr.
Pumblechook, though in a condition of ruffled dignity, could not
protest. But he eyed me severely — as if I had done anything to
him! — and departed with the words reproachfully deHvered: 'Boy!
Let your behaviour here be a credit unto them which brought
you up by hand!' I was not free from apprehension that he
would come back to propound through the gate, 'And sixteen?'
But he didn't.

My young conductress locked the gate, and we went across the
court-yard. It was paved and clean, but grass was growing in
every crevice. The brewery buildings had a little lane of com-
munication with it; and the wooden gates of that lane stood open,
and all the brewery beyond stood open, away to the high enclosing
wall; and all was empty and disused. The cold wind seemed to
blow colder there, than outside the gate; and it made a shrill noise
in howling in and out at the open sides of the brewery, like the
noise of wind in the rigging of a ship at sea.

She saw me looking at it, and she said, 'You could drink without
hurt all the strong beer that's brewed there now, boy.'

'I should think I could, Miss,' said I, in a shy way.

'Better not try to brew beer there now, or it would turn out sour,
boy; don't you think so?'

'It looks like it, miss.'

'Not that anybody means to try,' she added, 'for that's all done
with, and the place will stand as idle as it is, till it falls. As to

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 53

strong beer, there's enough of it in the cellars already, to drown
the Manor House.'

'Is that the name of this house, miss?'

'One of its names, boy.'

'It has more than one, then, miss?'

'One more. Its other name was Satis; which is Greek, or Latin,
or Hebrew, or all three — or all one to me — for enough.'

'Enough House!' said I: 'that's a curious name, miss.'

'Yes,' she replied; 'but it meant more than it said. It meant,
when it was given, that whoever had this house, could want nothing
else. They must have been easily satisfied in those days, I should
think. But don't loiter, boy.'

Though she called me 'boy' so often, and with a carelessness that
was far from complimentary, she was of about my own age. She
seemed much older than I, of course, being a girl, and beautiful
and self-possessed; and she was as scornful of me as if she had
been one-and-twenty, and a queen.

We went into the house by a side door — the great front entrance
had two chains across it outside — and the first thing I noticed was,
that the passages were all dark, and that she had left a candle
burning there. She took it up, and we went through more pass-
ages and up a staircase, and still it was all dark, and only the candle
lighted us.

At last we came to the door of a room, and she said, 'Go in.'

I answered, more in shyness than politeness, 'After you, miss.'

To this, she returned: 'Don't be ridiculous, boy; I am not going
in.' And scornfully walked away, and — what was worse — took
the candle with her.

This was very uncomfortable, and I was half afraid. However,
the only thing to be done being to knock at the door, I knocked,
and was told from within to enter. I entered, therefore, and found
myself in a pretty large room, well lighted with wax candles. No
glimpse of daylight was to be seen in it. It was a dressing-room,
as I supposed from the furniture, though much of it was of forms
and uses then quite unknown to me. But prominent in it was a
draped table with a gilded looking-glass, and that I made out at
first sight to be a fine lady's dressing-table.

54 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

Whether I should have made out this object so soon, if there had
oeen no fine lady sitting at it, I cannot say. In an arm-chair, with
an elbow resting on the table and her head leaning on that hand,
sat the strangest lady I have ever seen, or shall ever see.

She was dressed in rich materials — satins, and lace, and silks-
all of white. lier shoes were white. And she had a long white
veil dependent from her hair, and she had bridal flowers in her
hair, but her hair was white. Some bright jewels sparkled on her
neck and on her hands, and some other jewels lay sparkling on the
table. Dresses less splendid than the dress she wore, and half-
packed trunks, were scattered about. She had not quite finished
dressing, for she had but one shoe on — the other was on the table
near her hand — her veil was but half arranged, her watch and
chain were not put on, and some lace for her bosom lay with those
trinkets, and with her handkerchief, and gloves, and some flowers,
and a Prayer-book, all confusedly heaped about the looking-glass.

It was not in the first few moments that I saw all these things,
though I saw most of them in the first moments than might be sup-
posed. But, I saw that everything within my view which ought to
be white, had been white long ago, and had lost its lustre, and was
faded and yellow. I saw that the bride within the bridal dress had
withered like the dress, and like the flowers, and had no brightness
left but the brightness of her sunken eyes. I saw that the dress
had been put upon the rounded figure of a young woman, and
that the figure upon which it now hung loose, had shrunk to skin
and bone. Once, I had been taken to see some ghastly waxwork
at the Fair, representing I know not what impossible personage
lying in state. Once, I had been taken to one of our old marsh
churches to see a skeleton in the ashes of a rich dress, that had
been dug out of a vault under the church pavement. Now, wax-
work and skeleton seemed to have dark eyes that moved and looked
U me. I should have cried out, if I could.

Who is it?' said the lady at the table.

Tip, ma'am.'

Tip?'

'Mr. Pumblechook's boy, ma'am. Come — to play.'

'Come nearer; let me look at you. Come close.'

It was when I stood before her, avoiding her eyes, that I toob

Pips Waits on Miss Havisham

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 5S

note of the surrounding objects in detail, and saw that her watch
had stopped at twenty minutes to nine, and that a clock in the
room had stopped at twenty minutes to nine.

'Look at me,' said Miss Havisham. 'You are not afraid of a
woman who has never seen the sun since you were born?'

I regret to state that I was not afraid of telling the enormous
lie comprehended in the answer 'No.'

'Do you know what I touch here?' she said, laying her hands,
I one upon the other, on her left side.

'Yes, ma'am.' (It made me think of the young man.)

'What do I touch?'

'Your heart.'

'Broken!'

She uttered the. word w^ith an eager look, and with strong em-
phasis, md with a weird smile that had a kind of boast in it. Af-
terwards, she kept her hands there for a little while, and slowly
took them away as if they were heavy.

'I am tired,' said Miss Havisham. 'I want diversion, and I have
done with men and women. Play.'

I think it will be conceded by my most disputatious reader, that
she could hardly have directed an unfortunate boy to do anything
in the wide world more difficult to be done under the circumstances.

'I sometimes have sick fancies,' she went on, 'and I have a sick
fancy that I want to see some play. There, there!' with an im-
patient movement of the fingers of her right hand; 'play, play,
play!'

For a moment, with the fear of my sister's working me before
I my eyes, I had a desparate idea of starting round the room in the
assumed character of Mr. Pumblechook's chaise-cart. But, I felt
myself so unequal to the performance that I gave it up, and stood
looking at Miss Havisham in what I suppose she took for a dogged
manner, inasmuch as she said, when we had taken a good look at
each other:

'Are you sullen and obstinate?'

'No, ma'am, I am very sorry for you, and very sorry I can't play
just now. If you complain of me I shall get into trouble with my
sister so I would do it if I could; but it's so new here, and so
strange, and so fine — and melancholy — ' I stopped, fearing I

56 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

might say too much, or had already said it, and we took another
look at each other.

Before she spoke again, she turned her eyes from me, and looked I
at the dress she wore, and at the dressing-table, and finally at her-
self in the looking-glass.

'So new to him,' she muttered; 'so old to me; so strange to him,
so familiar to me; so melancholy to both of us! Call Estella.'

As she was still looking at the reflection of herself, I thought
she was still talking to herself, and kept quiet.

'Call Estella,' she repeated, flashing a look at me. 'You can do
that. Call Estella. At the door.'

To stand in the dark in a mysterious passage of an unknown
house, bawling Estella to a scornful young lady neither visible nor
responsive, and feeling it a dreadful liberty so to roar out her name,
was almost as bad as playing to order. But she answered at last,
and her light came along the dark passage like a star.

Miss Havisham beckoned her to come close, and took up a jewel
from the table, and tried its effect upon her fair young bosom and
against her pretty brown hair. 'Your own, one day, my dear, and
you will use it well. Let me see you play cards with this boy.'

'With this boy! Why, he is a common labouring-boy!'

I thought I overheard Miss Havisham answer — only it seemed
so unlikely — 'Well? You can break his heart.'

'What do you play, boy?' asked Estella of myself, with the
greatest disdain.

'Nothing but beggar my neighbour, miss.'

'Beggar him,' said Miss Havisham to Estella. So we sat down
to cards.

It was then I began to understand that everything in the room
had stopped, like the watch and the clock, a long time ago. I
noticed that Miss Havisham put down the jewel exactly on the
spot from which she had taken it up. As Estella dealt the cards,
I glanced at the dressing-table again, and saw that the shoe upon
it, once white, now yellow, had never been worn. I glanced down
at the foot from which the shoe was absent, and saw that the silk
stocking on it, once white, now yellow, had been trodden ragged.
Without this arrest of everything, this standing still of all the pale
decayed objects, not even the withered bridal dress on the collapsed

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 57

form could have looked so like grave-clothes, or the long veil so
like a shroud.

So she sat, corpse-like, as we played at cards; the frillings and
trimmings on her bridal dress, looking like earthy paper. I knew
nothing then of the discoveries that are occasionally made of bodies
buried in ancient times, which fall to powder in the moment of
being distinctly seen; but, I have often thought since, that she
must have looked as if the admission of the natural light of day
would have struck her to dust.

'He calls the knaves. Jacks, this boy!' said Estella with disdain,
before our first game was out. 'And what coarse hands he hasi
And what thick boots!'

I had never thought of being ashamed of my hands before; but
I began to consider them a very indifferent pair. Her contempt
for me was so strong, that it became infectious, and I caught it.

She won the game, and I dealt. I misdealt, as was only natural,
when I knew she was lying in wait for me to do wrong; and she
denounced me for a stupid, clumsy labouring-boy.

'You say nothing of her,' remarked Miss Havisham to me, as
she looked on. 'She says many hard things of you, yet you say
nothing of her. What do you think of her?'

'I don't like to say,' I stammered.

'Tell me in my ear,' said Miss Havisham, bending down.

'I think she is very proud,' I replied, in a whisper.

'Anything else?'

'I think she is very pretty.'

'Anything else?'

'I think she is very insulting.' (She was looking at me thai
Iwith a look of supreme aversion.)

'Anything else?'

'I think I should like to go home.'

'And never see her again, though she is so pretty?'

'I am not sure that 1 shouldn't like to see her again, but I
should like to go home now.'

'You shall go soon,' said Miss Havisham aloud. 'Play the game
out'

Saving for the one weird smile at first, I should have felt almost
sure that Miss Havisham's face could not smile. It had dropped

58 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

into a watchful and brooding expression — most likely when all the
things about her had become transfixed — and it looked as if noth-
ing could ever lift it up again. Her chest had dropped, so that she
stooped; and her voice had dropped, so that she spoke low, and
with a dead lull upon her; altogether, she had the appearance of
having dropped, body and soul, within and without, under the
weight of a crushing blow.

I played the game to an end with Estella, and she beggared me.
She threw the cards down on the table when she had won them all,
as if she despised them for having been won of me.

'When shall I have you here again?' said Miss Havisham. 'Let
me think.'

I was beginning to remind her that to-day was Wednesday, when
she checked me with her former impatient movement of the fingers
of her right hand.

'There, there! I know nothing of days of the week; I know
nothing of weeks of the year. Come again after six days. You
hear?'

*Yes, ma'am.'

'Estella, take him down. Let him have something to eat, and
let him roam and look about him while he eats. Go, Pip.'

I followed the candle down, as I had followed the candle up, and
she stood it in the place where we had found it. Until she opened
the side entrance, I had fancied, without thinking about it, that it
must necessarily be night-time. The rush of the daylight quite
confounded me, and made me feel as if I had been in the candle-
light of the strange room many hours.

'You are to wait here, you boy,' said Estella; and disappeared
and closed the door.

I took the opportunity of being alone in the court-yard, to look
at my coarse hands and my common boots. My opinion of those
accessories was not favourable. They had never troubled me be-
fore, but they troubled me now, as vulgar appendages. I deter-
mined to ask Joe why he had ever taught me to call those picture-
cards, Jacks, which ought to be called knaves. I wished Joe had
been rather genteelly brought up, and then 1 should have been
so too.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 59

She came back with some bread and meat and a little mug of
beer. She put the mug down on the stones of the yard, and gave
me the bread and meat without looking at me, as insolently as if
I were a dog in disgrace. I was so humiliated, hurt, spurned, of-
fended, angry, sorry — I cannot hit upon the right name for the
smart — God knows what its name was — that tears started to my
eyes. The moment they sprang there, the girl looked at me with
a quick delight in having been the cause of them. This gave me
power to keep them back and to look at her: so, she gave a con-
temptuous toss — but with a sense, I thought, of having made too
sure that I was so wounded — and left me.

But, when she was gone, I looked about me for a place to hide
my face in, and got behind one of the gates in the brewery-lane,
and leaned my sleeve against the wall there, and leaned my fore-
head on it and cried. As I cried, I kicked the wall, and took a
hard twist at my hair; so bitter were my feelings, and so sharp was
the smart without a name, that needed counteraction.

My sister's bringing up had made me sensitive. In the little
world in which children have their existence, whosoever brings
them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt, as
injustice. It may be only small injustice that the child can be ex-
posed to ; but the child is small, and its world is small, and its rock-
ing-horse stands as many hands high, according to scale, as a big-
boned Irish hunter. Within myself, I had sustained, from my
babyhood, a perpetual conflict with injustice. I had known, from
the time when I could speak, that my sister, in her capricious and
vdolent coercion, was unjust to me. I had cherished a profound
conviction that her bringing me up by hand, gave her no right to
bring me up by jerks. Through all my punishments, disgraces,
fasts and vigils, and other penitential performances, I had nursed
this assurance; and to my communing so much with it, in a solitary
and unprotected way, I in great part refer the fact that I was
morally timid and very sensitive.

I got rid of my injured feelings for the time, by kicking them
into the brewery-wall, and twisting them out of my hair, and then
[ smoothed my face with my sleeve, and came from behind the
;ate. The bread and meat were acceptable, and the beer was

60 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

warming and tingling, and I was soon in spirits to look about me.
To be sure, it was a deserted place, down to the pigeon-house
in the brewery-yard, which had been blown crooked on its pole
by some high wind, and would have made the pigeons think them-
selves at sea, if there had been any pigeons there to be rocked by
it. But, there were no pigeons in the dove-cot, no horses in the
stable, no pigs in the sty, no malt in the storehouse, no smells of
grains and beer in the copper or the vat. All the uses and scents
of the brewery might have evaporated with its last reek of smoke.
In a by-yard, there was a wilderness of empty casks, which had a
certain sour remembrance of better days lingering about them;
but it was too sour to be accepted as a sample of the beer that was
gone — and in this respect I remember those recluses as being like
most others.

Behind the furthest end of the brewery, was a rank garden with
an old wall: not so high but that I could struggle up and hold on
long enough to look over it, and see that the rank garden was the
garden of the house, and that it was overgrown with tangled weeds,
but that there was a track upon the green and yellow paths, as if
some one sometimes walked there, and that Estella was walking
away from me even then. But she seemed to be everywhere. For,
when I yielded to the temptation presented by the casks, and be-
gan to walk on them, I saw her walking on them at the end of the
yard of casks. She had her bapk towards me, and held her pretty
brown hair spread out in her two hands, and never looked round,
and passed out of my view directly. So, in the brewery itself —
by which I mean the large paved lofty place in which they used
to make the beer, and where the brewing utensils still were. When
I first went into it, and, rather oppressed by its gloom, stood near
the door looking about me, I saw her pass among the extinguished
fires, and ascend some light iron stairs, and go out by a gallery high
overhead, as if she were going out into the sky.

It was in this place, and at this moment, that a strange thing
happened to my fancy. I thought it a strange thing then, and I
thought it a stranger thing long afterwards. I turned my eyes — •
a little dimmed by looking up at the frosty light — towards a great
wooden beam in a low nook of the building near me on my right

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 61

hand, and I saw a figure hanging there by the neck. A figure all
in yellow white, with but one shoe to the feet ; and it hung so, that
I could see that the faded trimmings of the dress were like earthy
paper, and that the face was Miss Havisham's, with a movement
going over the whole countenance as if she were trying to call to
me. In the terror of seeing the figure, and in the terror of being
certain that it had not been there a moment before, I at first ran
from it, and then ran towards it. And my terror was greatest of all
when I found no figure there.

Nothing less than the frosty light of the cheerful sky, the sight
of people passing beyond the bars of the court-yard gate, and the
reviving influence of the rest of the bread and meat and beer, could
have brought me round. Even with those aids, I might not have
come to myself as soon as I did, but that I saw Estella approaching
with the keys, to let me out. She would have some fair reason for
looking down upon me, I thought, if she saw me frightened; and
she should have no fair reason.

She gave me a triumphant glance in passing me, as if she re-
joiced that my hands were so coarse and my boots were so thick,
and she opened the gate, and stood holding it. I was passing out
, without looking at her, when she touched me with a taunting hand

'Why don't you cry?'

'Because I don't want to.'

'You do,' said she. 'You have been crying till you are half blind,
and you are near crying again now.'

She laughed contemptuously, pushed me out, and locked the gate
upon me. I went straight to Mr. Pumblechook's, and was immense-
ly relieved to find him not at home. So, leaving word with the shop-
man on what day I was wanted at Miss Havisham's again, I set
off on the four-mile walk to our forge ; pondering, as I went along,
on all I had seen, and deeply revolving that I was a common labour-
ing-boy; that my hands were coarse; that my boots were thick;
that I had fallen into a despicable habit of calling knaves Jacks;
that I was much more ignorant than I had considered myself last
night, and generally that I was in a low-lived bad way.

62 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

CHAPTER IX

When I reached home, my sister was very curious to know all
about Miss Havisham's, and asked a number of questions. And I
soon found myself getting heavily bumped from behind in the
pape of the neck and the small of the back, and having my face
Lpnominiously shoved against the kitchen wall, because I did not
answer those questions at sufficient length.

If a dread of not being understood be hidden in the breasts of
other young people to anything like the extent to which it used to
be hidden in mine — which I consider probable, as I have no par-
ticular reason to suspect myself of having been a monstrosity — it
is the key to many reservations. I felt convinced that if I described
Miss Havisham's as my eyes had seen it, I should not be under-
stood. Not only that, but I felt convinced that Miss Havisham
too would not be understood; and although she was perfectly in-
comprehensible to me, I entertained an impression that there would
be something coarse and treacherous in my dragging her as she
really was (to say nothing of Miss Estella) before the contempla-
tion of Mrs. Joe. Consequently, I said as little as I could, and had
my face shoved against the kitchen wall.

The worst of it was that that bullying old Pumblechook, preyed
upon by a devouring curiosity to be informed of all I had seen and
heard, came gaping over in his chaise-cart at tea-time, to have the
details divulged to him. And the mere sight of the torment, with
his fishy eyes and mouth open, his sandy hair inquisitively on
end, and his waistcoat heaving with windy arithmetic, made me
vicious in my reticence.

'Well, boy,' Uncle Pumblechook began, as soon as he was seated
in the chair of honour by the fire. 'How did you get on up-town?'

I answered, Tretty well, sir,' and my sister shook her fist at me.

Tretty well?' Mr. Pumblechook repeated. Tretty well is no
answer. Tell us what you mean by pretty well, boy?'

Whitewash on the forehead hardens the brain into a state of
obstinacy perhaps. Anyhow, with whitewash from the wall on my
forehead, my obstinacy was adamantine. I reflected for some time,

I

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 63

and then answered as if I had discovered a new idea, 'I mean
pretty well.'

My sister with an exclamation of impatience was going to fly
at me — I had no shadow of defence, for Joe was busy in the forge —
when Mr. Purnblechook interposed with 'No! Don't lose your
temper. Leave this lad to me, ma'am; leave this lad to me.' Mr.
Pumblechook then turned me towards him, as if he were going to
cut my hair, and said:

'First (to get our thoughts in order): Forty-three pence?'

I calculated the consequences of replying Tour Hundred Pound,'
and finding them against me, went as near the answer as I could —
which was somewhere about eightpence off. Mr. Pumblechook then
put me through my pence-table from 'twelve pence make one shill-
ing,' up to 'forty pence make three and fourpence,' and then trium-
phantly dpviianded, as if he had done for me, 'Now! How much is
forty-thrt^ pence? To which I replied, after a long interval of re-
flection, 'I don't know.' And I was so aggravated that I almost
doubt if I did know.

Mr. Pumblechook worked his head like a screw to screw it out
of me, and said, 'Is forty-three pence seven and sixpence three
fardens, for instance?'

*Yes!' said I. And although my sister instantly boxed my ears,
it was highly gratifying to me to see that the answer spoilt his joke,
and brought him to a dead stop.

'Boy! What like is Miss Havisham?' Mr. Pumblechook began
again when he had recovered; folding his arms tight on his chest
and applying the screw.

'Very tall and dark,' I told him.

'Is she, uncle?' asked my sister.

Mr. Pumblechook winked assent; from which I at once inferred
that he had never seen Miss Havisham, for she was nothing of the
kind.

'Good!' said Mr. Pumblechook, conceitedly. ('This is the way to
have him! We are beginning to hold our own, I think. Mum?')

'I am sure, uncle,' returned Mrs. Joe, 'I wish you had him al-
ways: you know so well how to deal with him.'

'Now, boy! What was she a doing of, when you went in to-day?"'
asked Mr. Pumblechook.

64. GREAT EXPECTATIONS

'She was sitting/ I answered, 'in a black velvet coach.'

Mr. Pumblechook and Mrs. Joe stared at one another — as they
well might — and both repeated, 'In a black velvet coach?'

'Yes,' said I. 'And Miss Estella — that's her niece, I think — hand-
ed her in cake and wine at the coach-window, on a gold plate. And
we all had cake and wine on gold plates. And I got up behind the
coach to eat mine, because she told me to.'

'Was anybody else there?' asked Mr. Pumblechook.

'Four dogs,' said I.

'Large or small?'

'Immense,' said I. 'And they fought for veal cutlets out of a
silver basket.'

Mr. Pumblechook and Mrs. Joe stared at one another again, in
utter amazement. I was perfectly frantic — a reckless witness under
the torture — and would have told them anything.

'Where was this coach, in the name of gracious?' asked my sister.

'In Miss Havisham's room.' They stared again. 'But there
weren't any horses to it.' I added this saving clause, in the moment
of rejecting four richly caparisoned coursers, which I had had wild
thoughts of harnessing.

'Can this be possible, uncle?' asked Mrs. Joe. 'What can the boy
mean?'

'I'll tell you, Mum,' said Mr. Pumblechook. 'My opinion is, it's
a sedan-chair. She's flighty, you know — very flighty — quite flighty
enough to pass her days in a sedan-chair.'

'Did you ever see her in it, uncle?' asked Mrs. Joe.

'How could I,' he returned, forced to the admission, 'when I
never see her in my life? Never clapped eyes upon her! '

'Goodness, uncle! And yet you have spoken to her?'

'Why, don't you know,' said Mr. Pumblechook, testily, 'that
when I have been there, I have been took up to the outside of her
door, and the door has stood ajar, and she has spoken to me that
way? Don't say you don't know that, Mum. Howsoever, the boy
went there to play. What did you play at, boy?'

'We played with flags,' I said. (I beg to observe that I think of
myself with amazement, when I recall the lies I told on this occa-
sion.)

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 65

Tlags!' echoed my sister.

'Yes/ said I. 'Estella waved a blue flag, and I waved a red one.
and Miss Havisham waved one sprinkled all over with little gold
stars, out at the coach-window. And then we all waved our swords
and hurrahed.'

'Swords!' repeated my sister. 'Where did you get swords from?'

'Out of a cupboard,' said I. 'And I saw pistols in it — an jam —
and pills. And there was no daylight in the room, but it was all
lighted up with candles.'

'That's true, Mum,' said Mr. Pumblechook, with a grave nod.
'That's the state of the case, for that much I've seen myself.' And
then they both stared at me, and I, with an obtrusive show of art-
lessness on my countenance, stared at them, and plaited the right
leg of my trousers with my right hand.

If they had asked me any more questions I should undoubtedly
have betrayed myself, for I was even then on the point of mention-
ing that there was a balloon in the yard, and should have hazarded
the statement but for my invention being divided between that
phenomenon and a bear in the brewery. They were so much oc-
cupied, however, in discussing the marvels I had already presented
for their consideration, that I escaped. The subject still held them
when Joe came in from his work to have a cup of tea. To whom my
sister, more for the relief of her own mind than for the gratification
of his, related my pretended experiences.

Now, when I saw Joe open his blue eyes and roll them all round
the kitchen in helpless amazement, I was overtaken by penitence ;
but only as regarded him — not in the least as regarded the other
two. Towards Joe, and Joe only, I considered myself a young mon-
ster, while they sat debating what results would come to me from
Miss Havisham 's acquaintance and favour. They had no doubt
that Miss Havisham would 'do something' for me; their doubts re-
lated to the form that something would take. My sister stood out
for 'property.' Mr. Pumblechook was in favour of a handsome
premium for binding me apprentice to some genteel trade — say,
the corn and seed trade, for instance. Joe fell into the deepest dis-
grace with both, for offering the bright suggestion that I might only
be presented with one of the dogs who had fought for the veal

66 GREAT PTXPECTATIONS

cutlets. *If a fool's head can't express better opinions than that,'
said my sister, 'and you have got any work to do, you had better
go and do it.' So he went.

After Mr. Pumblechook had driven off, and when my sister was
washing up, I stole into the forge to Joe, and remained by him
until he had done for the night. Then I said, 'Before the fire goes
out, Joe, I should like to tell you something.'

'Should you, Pip?' said Joe, drawing his shoeing-stool near the
forge. 'Then tell us. What is it, Pip?'

'Joe,' said I, taking hold of his rolled-up shirtsleeve, and twisting
it between my finger and thumb, 'you remember all that about Miss
Havisham's?'

^Remember?' said Joe. 'I believe you! Wonderful!'

'It's a terrible thing, Joe; it ain't true.'

'What are you telling of, Pip?' cried Joe, falHng back in the
greatest amazement. 'You don't mean to say it's — '

'Yes, I do; it's lies, Joe.'

'But not all of it? Why sure you don't mean to say, Pip, that
there was no black welwet co — ch?' For, I stood shaking my head
'But at least there was dogs, Pip? Come, Pip,' said Joe persuasive-
ly, 'if there warn't no weal-cutlets, at least there was dogs?'

'No, Joe.'

A dog?' said Joe. 'A puppy? Come!'

'No, Joe, there was nothing at all of the kind.'

As I fixed my eyes hopelessly on Joe, Joe contemplated me in
dismay. 'Pip, old chap! This won't do, old fellow! I say! Where
do you expect to go to?'

'It's terrible, Joe; ain't it?'

Terrible?' cried Joe. 'Awful! What possessed you?'

'I don't knovvT what possessed me, Joe,' I replied, letting his
shirt-sleeve go, and sitting down in the ashes at his feet, hanging
my head; 'but I wish you hadn't taught me to call Knaves at cards.
Jacks; and I wish my boots weren't so thick nor my hands so
coarse.'

And then I told Joe that I felt very miserable, and that I hadn't
been able to explain myself to IMrs. Joe and Pumblechook, who
were so rude to me, and that there had been a beautiful young lady
at Miss Havisham's who was dreadfully proud, and that she had

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 67

said I was common, and that I knew I was common, and that I
wished I was not common, and that the lies had come of it some-
how, though I didn't know how.

This was a case of metaphysics, at least as difficult for Joe to
deal with, as for me. But Joe took the case altogether out of the re-
gion of metaphysics, and by that means vanquished it.

There's one thing you may be sure of, Pip,' said Joe, after some
rumination, 'namely, that lies is lies. Hov/soever they come, they
didn't ought to come, and they come from the father of lies, and
work round to the same. Don't you tell no more of 'em, Pip. That
ain't the way to get out of being common, old chap. And as to be-
ing common, I don't make it out at all clear. You are oncommon in
some things. You're oncommon small. Likewise you're a oncom
mon scholar.'

'No, I am ignorant and backward, Joe.'

'Why, see what a letter you wrote last night! Wrote in print
even! I've seen letters — Ah! and from gentlefolks! — that I'll swear
weren't wrote in print,' said Joe.

'I have learnt next to nothing, Joe. You think much of me. It's
only that.'

'Well, Pip,' said Joe, 'be it so, or be it son't, you must be a com-
mon scholar afore you can be a oncommon one. I should hope! The
king upon his throne, with his crown upon his 'ed, can't sit and
write his acts of Parliament in print, without having begun, when
he were a unpromoted Prince, with the alphabet — Ah!' added Joe,
with a shake of the head that was full of meaning, 'and begun at
A too, and worked his way to Z. And / know what that is to do,
though I can't say I've exactly done it.'

There was some hope in this piece of wisdom, and it rather en-
couraged me.

'Whether common ones as to callings and earnings,' pursued Joe,
reflectively, 'mightn't be the better of continuing for to keep com-
pany with common ones, instead of going out to play with oncom-
mon ones — which reminds me to hope that there were a flag, per-
haps?'

'No, Joe.'

'(I'm sorry there weren't a flag, Pip.) Whether that might be,
or mightn't be, is a thing as can't be looked into now, without put-

•68 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

ting your sister on the Rampage; and that's a thing not to be
thought of, as being done intentional. Lookee here, Pip, at what is
said to you by a true friend. Which this to you the true friend say.
If you can't get to be oncommon through going straight, you'll
never get to do it through going crooked. So don't tell no more on
'em, Pip, and live well and die happy.'

^You are not angry with me, Joe?'

'No, old chap. But bearing in mind that them were which I
meantersay of a stunning and outdacious sort — alluding to them
which bordered on weal-cutlets and dog-fighting — a sincere well-
wisher would adwise, Pip, their being dropped into your medita-
tions, when you go upstairs to bed. That's all, old chap, and don't
never do it no more.'

When I got up to my little room and said my prayers, I did not
forget Joe's recommendation, and yet my young mind was in that
disturbed and unthankful state, that I thought long after I laid me
dovv^n, how common Estella would consider Joe, a mere blacksmith:
how thick his boots, and how coarse his hands. I thought how Joe
and my sister were then sitting in the kitchen, and how I had come
up to bed from the kitchen, and how Miss Havisham and Estella
never sat in the kitchen, but were far above the level of such com-
mon doings. I fei? asleep recalling what I 'used to do' when I was
at Miss Havisham's; as though I had been there weeks or months,
instead of hours: and as though it were quite an old subject of re-
membrance, instead of one that had risen only that day.

That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in
me. But it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day
struck out of it, and think how different its course would have been.
Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain
of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound
you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.

CHAPTER X

The felicitous idea occurred to me a morning or two later when I
woke, that the best step I could take towards making myself un-
common was to get out of Biddy everything she knew. In pur-

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 69

suance of this luminous conception, I mentioned to Biddy when I
went to Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt's at night, that I had a particular
reason for wishing to get on in life, and that I should feel very much
obliged to her if she would impart all her learning to me. Biddy,
who was the most obliging of girls, immediately said she would,
and indeed began to carry out her promise within five minutes.

The Educational scheme or Course established by Mr. Wopsle's
great-aunt may be resolved into the following synopsis. The pupils
ate apples and put straws down one another's backs, until Mr.
Wopsle's great-aunt collected her energies, and made an indis-
criminate totter at them with a birch-rod. After receiving the
charge with every mark of derision, the pupils formed in line and
buzzingly passed a ragged book from hand to hand. The book had
an alphabet in it, some figures and tables, and a little spelling —
that is to say, it had had once. As soon as this volume began to cir-
culate, Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt fell into a state of coma; arising
either from sleep or a rheumatic paroxysm. The pupils then en-
tered among themselves upon a competitive examination on the
subject of Boots, with the view of ascertaining who could tread the
hardest upon whose toes. This mental exercise lasted until Biddy
made a rush at them and distributed three defaced Bibles (shaped
as if they had been unskilfully cut off the chump-end of some-
thing), more illegibly printed at the best than any curiosities of
literature I have since met with, speckled all over with ironmould,
and having various specimens of the insect world smashed between
their leaves. This part of the Course was usually lightened by
several single combats between Biddy and refractory students.
When the fights were over, Biddy gave out the number of a page,
and then we all read aloud what we could — or what we couldn't —
in a frightful chorus; Biddy leading with a high shrill monotonous
voice, and none of us having the least notion of, or reverence for,
what we were reading about. When this horrible din had lasted a
certain time, it mechanically awoke Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt, who
staggered at a boy fortuitously, and pulled his ears. This was un-
derstood to terminate the Course for the evening, and we emerged
into the air with shrieks of intellectual victory. It is fair to remark
that there was no prohibition against any pupil's entertaining him-
self with a slate or even with the ink (when there was any), but

70 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

that it was not easy to pursue that branch of study in the winter
season, on account of the Httle general shop in which the classes
were holden — and which was also Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt's sit-
ting-room and bed-chamber — being but faintly illuminated
through the agency of one low-spirited dip-candle and no snuffers.

It appeared to me that it would take time to become uncommon
under these circumstances: nevertheless, I resolved to try it, and
that very evening Biddy entered on our special agreement, by im-
parting some information from her little catalogue of Prices, under
the head of moist sugar, and lending me, to copy at home, a large
old English D which she had imitated from the heading of some
newspaper, and which I supposed, until she told me what it was, to
be a design for a buckle.

Of course there was a public-house in the village, and of course
Joe liked sometimes to smoke his pipe there. I had received strict
orders from my sister to call for him at the Three Jolly Bargemen,
that evening, on my way from school, and bring him home at my
peril. To the Three Jolly Bargemen, therefore, I directed my steps.

There was a bar at the Jolly Bargemen, with some alarmingly
long chalk scores in it on the wall at the side of the door, which
seemed to me to be never paid off. They had been there ever since
I could remember, and had grown more than I had. But there
was a quantity of chalk about our country, and perhaps the people
neglected no opportunity of turning it to account.

It being Saturday night, I found the landlord looking rather
grimly at these records, but as my business was with Joe and not
with him, I merely wished him good-evening, and passed into the
common room at the end of the passage, where there was a bright
large kitchen fire, and where Joe was smoking his pipe in company
with Mr. Wopsle and a stranger. Joe greeted me as usual with
'Halloa, Pip, old chap!' and the moment he said that, the stranger
turned his head and looked at me.

He was a secret-looking man whom I had never seen before. His
head was all on one side, and one of his eyes was half shut up, as if
he were taking aim at something with an invisible gun. He had a
pipe in his mouth, and he took it out, and, after slowly blowing all
his smoke away and looking hard at me all the time, nodded. So I

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 71

nodded, and then he nodded again, and made room on the settle
beside him that I might sit down there.

But, as I was used to sit beside Joe whenever I entered that place
of resort, I said 'No, thank you, sir,' and fell into the space Joe
made for me on the opposite settle. The strange man, after glanc-
ing at Joe, and seeing that his attention was otherwise engaged,
nodded to me again when I had taken my seat, and then rubbed
his leg — in a very odd way, as it struck me.

You was saying,' said the strange man, turning to Joe, 'that you
was a blacksmith.'

'Yes. I said it, you know,' said Joe.

'What'll you drink, Mr. — ? You didn't mention your name, by
the bye.'

Joe mentioned it now, and the strange man called him by it.

'What'll you drink, Mr. Gargery? At my expense? To top up
with?'

'Well,' said Joe, 'to tell you the truth, I ain't much in the habit
of drinking at anybody's expense but my own.'

'Habit? No,' returned the stranger, 'but once and away, and on
a Saturday night too. Come! Put a name to it, Mr. Gargery.'

'I wouldn't wish to be stiff company,' said Joe. 'Rum.'

'Rum,' repeated the stranger. 'And will the other gentleman
originate a sentiment?'

'Rum,' said Mr. Wopsle.

'Three Rums! ' cried the stranger, calling to the landlord. 'Glasses
round!'

'This other gentleman,' observed Joe, by way of introducing
Mr. Wopsle, 'is a gentleman that you would like to hear give it cut.
Our clerk at church.'

'Aha!' said the stranger, quickly, and cocking his eye at me.
'The lonely church, right out on the marshes, with the graves round
it!'

'That's it,' said Joe.

The stranger, with a comfortable kind of a grunt over his pipe,
put his legs up on the settle that he had to himself. He wore a
flapping broad-brimmed traveller's hat, and under it a handker-
chief tied over his head in the manner of a cap: so that he showed

72 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

no hair. As he looked at the fire, I thought I saw a cunning ex-
pression, followed by a half-laugh, come into his face.

'I am not acquainted with this country, gentlemen, but it seems
a solitary country towards the river.'

'Most marshes is solitary,' said Joe.

'No doubt, no doubt. Do you find any gipsies, now, or tramps,
or vagrants of any sort, out there?'

'No,' said Joe; 'none but a runaway convict now and then. And
we don't find them, easy. Eh, Mr. Wopsle?'

Mr. Wopsle, with a majestic remembrance of old discomfiture,
assented ; but not warmly.

'Seems you have been out after such?' asked the stranger.

'Once,' returned Joe. 'Not that we wanted to take them, you
understand; we went out as lookers on; me and Mr. Wopsle, and
Pip. Didn't us, Pip?'

'Yes, Joe.'

The stranger looked at me again — still cocking his eye, as if he
were expressly taking aim at me with his invisible gun — and said
'He's a likely young parcel of bones that. What is it you call him?

'Pip,' said Joe.

'Christened Pip?'

'No, not christened Pip.'

'Surname Pip?'

'No,' said Joe; 'it's a kind of a family name what he gave him-
self when a infant, and is called by.'

'Son of yours?'

'Well,' said Joe, meditatively — not, of course, that it could be
in anywise necessary to consider about it, but because it was the
way at the Jolly Bargemen to seem to consider deeply about ev-
erything that was discussed over pipes; 'well — no. No, he ain't.'

'Nevvy?' said the strange man.

'W>11,' said Joe, with the same appearance of profound cogita-
tion, 'he is not — no, not to deceive you, he is not — my nevvy.'

'What the Blue Blazes is he?' asked the stranger. Which ap-
peared to me to be an inquiry of unnecessary strength.

Mr. Wopsle struck in upon that; as one who knew all about re-
lationships, having professional occasion to bear in mind what
female relations a man might not marry; and expounded the ties

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 73

between me and Joe. Having his hand in, Mr. Wopsle finished
off with a most terrifically snarling passage from Richard the Third.
and seemed to think he had done quite enough to account for it
when he added, — 'as the poet says.'

And here I may remark that when Mr. Wopsle referred to me,
he considered it a necessary part of such reference to rumple my
hair and poke it into my eyes. I cannot conceive why everybody of
his standing who visited at our house should always have put me
through the same inflammatory process under similar circum-
stances. Yet I do not call to mind that I was ever in my earlier youth
the subject of remark in our social family circle, but some large-
handed person took some such ophthalmic steps to patronise me.

All this while, the strange man looked at nobody but me, and
looked at me as if he were determined to have a shot at me at last,
and bring me down. But he said nothing after offering his Blue
Blazes observation, until the glasses of rum-and-water were
brought: and then he made his shot, and a moo^t extraordinary
shot it was.

It was not a verbal remark, but a proceeding in dumb show, and
was pointedly addressed to me. He stirred his rum-and-water
pointedly at me, and he tasted his rum-and-water point e^^ly at me.
And he stirred it and he tasted it: not with a spoor that was
brought to him, but with a file.

He did this so that nobody but I saw the file ; and when he had
done it, he wiped the file and put it in a breast-pocket. I )^new it
to be Joe's file, and I knew that he knew my convict, the rroment
I saw the instrument. I sat gazing at him, spell-bound. B\^t he
now reclined on his settle, taking very Httle notice of me, -dnd
talking principally about turnips.

There was a delicious sense of cleaning-up and making a qviet
pause before going on in life afresh, in our village on Saturdi^y
nights, which stimulated Joe to dare to stay out half an hour longer
on Saturdays than at other times. The half-hour and the rum-and-
water running out together, Joe got up to go, and took me by the
hand.

'Stop half a moment, Mr. Gargery,' said the strange man. 'I
think I've got a bright new shilling somewhere in my pocket, and
if I have, the boy shall have it.'

74. GREAl EXPECTATIONS

He looked it out from d nandful of small change, folded it in
some crumpled paper, and gave it to me. 'Yours!' said he. 'Mind!
Your own.'

I thanked him, staring at iiim far beyond the bounds of good
manners, and holding tight to Joe. He gave Joe good-night, and he
gave Mr. Wopsle good-night (who went out with us), and he gave
me only a look with his aiming eye — no, not a look, for he shut it
up, but wonders may be done with an eye by hiding it.

On the way home, if I had been in a humor for talking, the talk
must have been all on my side, for Mr, Wopsle parted from us at
the door of the Jolly Bargemen, and Joe went all the way home
with his mouth wide open, to rinse the rum out with as much air
as possible. But I was in a mannei stupified by this turning up
of my old misdeed and old acquaintance, and could think of
nothing else.

My sister was not in a very bad temper when we presented our-
selves in the kitchen, and Joe was encouraged by that unusual cir-
cumstance to tell her about the bright shilling. 'A bad un, Fl] be
bound,' said Mrs. Joe, triumphantly, 'or he wouldn't have given it
to the boy? Let's look at it.'

I took it out of the paper, and it proved to be a good one. 'But
what's this?' said Mrs. Joe, throwing down the shilling and catch-
ing up the paper. Two One-Pound notes?'

Nothing less than two fat sweltering one-pound notes that
seemed to have been on terms of the warmest intimacy with all
the cattle markets in the country. Joe caught up his hat again, and
ran with them to the Jolly Bargemen to restore them to their owner.
While he was gone I sat down on my usual stool and looked vacant-
ly at my sister, feeing pretty sure that the man would not be there.

Presently, Joe came back, saying that the man was gone, but that
he, Joe, had left word at the Three Jolly Bargemen concerning the
notes. Then my sister sealed them up in a piece of paper, and put
them under some dried rose-leaves in an ornamental teapot on the
top of a press in the state parlour. There they remained a night-
mare to me many and many a night and day.

I had sadly broken sleep when I got to bed, through thinking ol
the strange man taking aim at me with his invisible gun, and of
the guiltily coarse and common thing it was, to be on secret terms

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 75

of conspiracy with convicts — a feature in my low career that I had
previously forgotten. I was haunted by the file too. A dread pos-
sessed me that when I least expected it, the file would reappear. I
coaxed myself to sleep by thinking of Miss Havisham's next
Wednesday; and in my sleep I saw the file coming at me out of a
door, without seeing who held it, and I screamed myself awake.

CHAPTER XI

At the appointed time I returned to Miss Havisham's and my hes-
itating ring at the gate brought out Estella. She ocked it after
admitting me, as she had done before, and again preceded me into
the dark passage where her candle stood. She took nc notice of me
until she had the candle in her hand, when she looked over her
shoulder, superciliously saying, 'You are to come this vvay to-day,'
and took me to quite another part of the house.

The passage was a long one, and seemed to pervade the whole
square basement of the Manor House. We traversed but one side
of the square, however, and at the end of it she stopped and put
her candle down and opened a door. Here the daylight reappeared,
and I found myself in a small paved court-yard, the opposite side
of which was formed by a detached dwelling-house, that looked as
if it had once belonged to the manager or head clerk of the extinct
brewery. There was a clock in the outer wall of this house. Like
the clock in Miss Havisham's room, and like Miss Havisham's
watch, it had stopped at twenty minutes to nine.

We went in at the door, which stood open, and into a gloomy
room with a low ceiling, on the ground floor at the back. There
was some company in the room, and Estella said to me as she
joined it, 'You are to go and stand there, boy, till you are wanted.'
^There' being the window, I crossed to it, and stood 'there,' in a
very uncomfortable state of mind, looking out.

It opened to the ground, and looked into a most miserable cor-
ner of the neglected garden, upon a rank ruin of cabbage-stalks,
and one box tree that had been clipped round long ago, like a
pudding, and had a new growth at the top of it, out of shape and of

76 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

a different colour, as if that part of the pudding had stuck to the
saucepan and got burnt. This was my homely thought, as I con-
templated the box tree. There had been some light snow, overnight,
and it lay nowhere else to my knowledge; but, it had not quite
melted from the cold shadow of this bit of garden, and the wind
caught it up in little eddies and threw it at the window, as if it
pelted me for coming there.

I divined that my coming had stopped conversation in the room,
and that its other occupants were looking at me. I could see
nothing of the room except the shining of the fire in the window
glass, but I stiffened in all my joints with the consciousness that
I was under close inspection.

There were three ladies in the room and one gentleman. Before
I had been standing at the window five minutes, they somehow
conveyed to me that they were all toadies and humbugs, but that
each of them pretended not to know that the others were toadies
and humbugs: because the admission that he or she did know
it, would have made him or her out to be a toady and humbug.

They all had a listless and dreary air of waiting somebody's
pleasure, and the most talkative of the ladies had to speak quite
rigidly to suppress a yawn. This lady, whose name was Camilla,
very much reminded me of my sister, with the difference that she
was older, and (as I found when I caught sight of her) of a
blunter cast of features. Indeed, when I knew her better I began
to think it was a Mercy she had any features at all, so very blank
and high was the dead wall of her face.

Toor dear soul!' said this lady, with an abruptness of manner
quite my sister's. 'Nobody's enemy but his own!'

'It would be much more commendable to be somebody else's
enemy,' said the gentleman; 'far more natural.'

'Cousin Raymond,' observed another lady, 'we are to love our
neighbour.'

'Sarah Pocket,' returned Cousin Raymond, 'if a man is not
his own neighbour, who is?'

Miss Pocket laughed, and Camilla laughed and said (checking
a yawn), 'The idea!' But I thought they seemed to think it
rather a good idea too. The other lady, who had not spoken yet,
<jaid gravely and emphatically, ^Very true!'

I

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 77

Toor soul!' Camilla presently went on (I knew they had all
i! been looking at me in the mean time), 'he is so very strange!
I Would any one believe that when Tom's wife died, he actually
could not be induced to see the importance of the children's hav-
ing the deepest of trimmings to their mourning? "Good Lord!"
says he, "Camilla, what can it signify so long as the poor bereaved
little things are in black?" So like Matthew! The idea!'

'Good points in him, good points in him,' said Cousin Raymond;
^Heaven forbid I should deny good points in him ; but he never had,
and he never will have, any sense of the proprieties.'

'You know I was obliged,' said Camilla, 'I was obliged to be
firm. I said, "It will not do, for the credit of the family." I told
him that, without deep trimmings, the family was disgraced. I cried
about it from breakfast till dinner. I injured my digestion. And at
last he flung out in his violent way, and said, with a D, "Then do
as you like." Thank Goodness it will always be a consolation to
me to know that I instantly went out in a pouring rain and bought
the things.'

^He paid for them, did he not?' asked Estella.

'It's not the question, my dear child, who paid for them,' re-
turned Camilla. 7 bought them. And I shall often think of that
with peace, when I wake up in the night.'

The ringing of a distant bell, combined with the echoing of
some cry or call along the passage by which I had come, interrupted
the conversation and caused Estella to say to me, 'Now, boy!'
On my turning round, they all looked at me with the utmost con-
tempt, and, as I went out, I heard Sarah Pocket say, 'Well I am
sure! What next!' and Camilla add, with indignation, 'Was
there ever such a fancy! The i-dg-a!'

As we were going with our candle along the dark passage,
Estella stopped all of a sudden, and, facing round, said in her
taunting manner, with her face quite close to mine:

'Well?'

'Well, miss,' I answered, almost falling over her and checking
myself.

She stood looking at me, and of course I stood looking at her

'Am I pretty?'

'Yes; I think you are very pretty.'

78 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

Am I insulting?'

'Not so much so as you were last time/ said I.

'Not so much so?'

'No.'

She fired when she asked the last question, and she slapped
my face with such force as she had, when I answered it.

'Now?' said she. 'You little coarse monster, what do you think
of me now?'

'I shall not tell you.'

'Because you are going to tell upstairs. Is that it?'

'No,' said I, 'that's not it.'

'Why don't you cry again, you little wretch?'

'Because I'll never cry for you again,' said I. Which was, I
suppose, as false a declaration as ever was made; for I was inwardly
crying for her then, and I know what I know of the pain she cost
me afterwards.

We went on our way upstairs after this episode; and, as we
were going up, we met a gentleman groping his way down.

'Whom have we here?' asked the gentleman, stopping and
looking at me.

'A boy,' said Estella.

He was a burly man of an exceedingly dark complexion, with
an exceedingly large head and a corresponding large hand. He
took my chin in his large hand and turned up my face to have
a look at me by the light of the candle. He was prematurely bald
on the top of his head, and had bushy black eyebrows that
wouldn't lie down, but stood up bristling. His eyes were set
very deep in his head, and were disagreeably sharp and suspicious.
He had a large watch-chain, and strong black dots where his
beard and whiskers would have been if he had let them. He was
nothing to me, and I could have had no foresight then, that he
ever would be anything to me, but it happened that I had this
opportunity of observing him well.

'Boy of the neighbourhood? Hey?' said he.

'Yes, sir,' said I.

'How do you come here?'

'Miss Havisham sent for me, sir,' I explained.

'Well! Behave yourself. I have a pretty large experience of

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 79

boys, and you're a bad set of fellows. Now mind!' said he, biting
the side of his great forefinger as he frowned at me, 'you behave
yourself!'

With these words he released me — which I was glad of, for his
hand smelt of scented soap — and went his way downstairs. I
wondered whether he could be a doctor; but no, I thought; he
couldn't be a doctor, or he would have a quieter and more per-
suasive manner. There was not much time to consider the sub-
ject, for we were soon in Miss Havisham's room, where she and
everything else were just as I had left them. Estella left me
standing near the door, and I stood there until Miss Havisham
cast her eyes upon me from the dressing-table.

'So!' she said, without being startled or surprised; 'the days
have worn away, have they?'

'Yes, ma'am. Today is — '

'There, there, there!' with the impatient movement of her
fingers. 'I don't want to know. Are you ready to play?'

T was obliged to answer in some confusion, 'I don't think T am,
ma'am.'

'Not at cards again?' she demanded with a searching look.

Yes, ma'am; I could do that, if I was wanted.'

'Since this house strikes you old and grave, boy,' said Miss
[avisham, impatiently, 'and you are unwilling to play, are you

illing to work?'

I could answer this inquiry with a better heart than I had been
ible to find for the other question, and I said I was quite willing.

'Then go into that opposite room,' said she, pointing at the door

ihind me with her withered hand, 'and wait there till I come.'

I crossed the staircase landing, and entered the room she indi-

Lted. From that room, too, the daylight was completely ex-
:luded, and it had an airless smell that was oppressive. A fire
lad been lately kindled in the damp old-fashioned grate, and it
was more disposed to go out than to burn up, and the reluctant
smoke which hung in the room seemed colder than the clearer
air — like our own marsh mist. Certain wintry branches of can-
dles on the high chimney-piece faintly lighted the chamber; or,
it would be more expressive to say, faintly troubled its darkness.
It was spacious, and I dare say had once been handsome, but every

80 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

discernible thing in it was covered with dust and mould, and
dropping to pieces. The most prominent object was a long table
with a tablecloth spread on it, as if a feast had been in preparation
when the house and the clocks all stopped together. An epergne
or centre-piece of some kind was in the middle of this cloth; it
was so heavily over-hung with cobwebs that its form was quite
undistinguishable ; and, as I looked along the yellow expanse out
of which I remember its seeming to grow, like a black fungus, I
saw speckled-legged spiders with blotchy bodies running home to
it, and running out from it, as if some circumstance of the great-
est public importance had just transpired in the spider community.

I heard the mice too, rattling behind the panels, as if the same
occurrence were important to their interests. But, the black-
beetles took no notice of the agitation, and groped about the
hearth in a ponderous elderly way, as if they were short-sighted
and hard of hearing, and not on terms with one another.

These crawling things had fascinated my attention, and I was
watching them from a distance, when Miss Havisham laid a hand
upon my shoulder. In her other hand she had a crutch-headed
stick on which she leaned, and she looked like the Witch of the
place.

'This,' said she, pointing to the long table with her stick, 'is
where I will be laid when I am dead. They shall come and look
at me here.'

With some vague misgiving that she might get upon the table
then and there and die at once, the complete realisation of the
ghastly waxwork at the Fair, I shrank under her touch.

'What do you think that is?' she asked me, again pointing with
her stick; 'that, where those cobwebs are?'

'I can't guess what it is ma'am.'

'It's a great cake. A bride-cake. Mine!'

She looked all round the room in a glaring manner, and then
said, leaning on me while her hand twitched my shoulder, 'Come,
come, come! Walk me, walk me!'

I made out from this, that the work I had to do, was to walk
Miss Havisham round and round the room. Accordingly, I started
at once, and she leaned upon my shoulder, and we went away at a

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 81

ce that might have been an imitation (founded on my first im-
pulse under that roof) of Mr. Pumblechook's chaise-cart.

She was not physically strong, and after a little time said,

Slower!' Still, we went at an impatient fitful speed, and as we

went, she twitched the hand upon my shoulder, and worked her

mouth, and led me to believe that we were going fast because

: her thoughts went fast. After a while she said, 'Call Estella!' so

i I went out on the landing and roared that name as I had done

t on the previous occasion. When her light appeared, I returned

to Miss Havisham, and we started away again round and round

the room.

[ If only Estella had come to be a spectator of our proceedings,
jl should have felt sufficiently discontented; but, as she brought
^with her the three ladies and the gentleman whom I had seen be-
low, I didn't know what to do. In my politeness I would have
; stopped; but. Miss Havisham twitched my shoulder, and we posted
(On — with a shame-faced consciousness on my part that they
would think it was all my doing.

'Dear Miss Havisham,' said Miss Sarah Pocket. 'How well you
look!'

I do not,' returned Miss Havisham. 'I am yellow skin and bone.*

Camilla brightened when Miss Pocket met with this rebuff;

and then she murmured, as she plaintively contemplated Miss

Havisham, 'Poor dear soul! Certainly not to be expected to look

well, poor thing. The idea!'

'And how are you?' said Miss Havisham to Camilla. As we
were close to Camilla then, I would have stopped as a matter of
course only Miss Havisham wouldn't stop. We swept on, and I
felt that I was highly obnoxious to Camilla.

Thank you. Miss Havisham,' she returned, 'I am as well as
can be expected.'

'WTiy, what's the matter with you?' asked Miss Havisham, with
exceeding sharpness.

'Nothing worth mentioning,' replied Camilla. 'I don't wish to
make a display of my feelings, but I have habitually thought of
you more in the night than I am quite equal to.'
'Then don't think of me,' retorted Miss Havisham.

82 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

'Very easily said!' remarked Camilla, amiably repressing a
sob, while a hitch came into her upper lip, and her tears overflowed.
'Raymond is a witness what ginger and sal volatile I am obliged
to take in the night. Raymond is a witness what nervous jerkings
I have in my legs. Chokings and nervous jerkings, however, are
nothing new to me when I think with anxiety of those I love. If
I could be less affectionate and sensitive, I should have a better
digestion and an iron set of nerves. I am sure I wish it could be
so. But as to not thinking of you in the night — the ideal' Here
a burst of tears.

The Raymond referred to, I understood to be the gentleman
present, and him I understood to be Mr. Camilla. He came to the
rescue at this point, and said in a consolatory and complimentary
voice, 'Camilla, my dear, it is well known that your family feelings
are gradually undermining you to the exetent of making one of
your legs shorter than the other.'

'I am not aware,' observed the grave lady whose voice 1 had
heard but once, 'that to think of any person is to make a great
claim upon that person, my dear.'

Miss Sarah Pocket, whom I now saw to be a little dry brown
corrugated old woman, with a small face that might have been
made of walnut shells, and a large mouth like a cat's without the
whiskers, supported this position by saying, 'No, indeed, my dear.
Hem!'

'Thinking is easy enough," said the grave lady.

'What is easier, you know?' assented Miss Sarah Pocket.

'Oh, yes, yes! ' cried Camilla, whose fermenting feelings appeared
to rise from her legs to her bosom. 'It's all very true! It's a
weakness to be so affectionate, but I can't help it. No doubt my
health would be much better if it was otherwise, still I wouldn t
change my disposition if I could. It's the cause of much suffering,
but it's a consolation to know I possess it, when I wake up in the
night.' Here another burst of feeling.

Miss Havisham and I had never stopped all this time, but kept
going round and round the room : now, brushing against th^ skirts
of the visitors: now, giving them the whole length of the dismal
chamber.

'There's Matthew!' said Camilla. 'Never mixing with any

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 83

natural ties, never coming here to see how Miss Havisham is!
I have taken to the sofa with my stay-lace cut, and have lain there
hours, insensible, with my head over the side, and my hair all
down, and my feet I don't know where — '

('Much higher than your head, my love,' said Mr. Camilla.)

'I have gone off into that state, hours and hours, on account oi
Matthew's strange and inexplicable conduct, and nobody has
thanked me.'

'Really I must say I should think not!' interposed the grave
lady.

'You see, my dear,' added Miss Sarah Pocket (a blandly vicious
personage), 'the question to put to yourself is, who did you expect
to thank you, my love?'

'Without expecting any thanks, or anything of the sort,' re-
sumed Camilla, 'I have remained in that state hours and hours,
and Raymond is a witness of the extent to which I have choked,
and what the total inefficacy of ginger has been, and I have been
heard at the pianoforte-tuner's across the street, where the poor
mistaken children have even supposed it to be pigeons cooing at a
distance — and now to be told — ' Here Camilla put her hand to her
throat, and began to be quite chemical as to the formation of new
combinations there.

When this same Matthew was mentioned. Miss Havisham
stopped me and herself, and stood looking at the speaker. This
change had a great influence in bringing Camilla's chemistry to a
sudden end.

'Matthew will come and see me at last,' said Miss Havisham,
sternly, 'when I am laid on that table. That will be his place —
there,' striking the table with the stick, 'at my head! And yours
will be there! And your husband's there! And Sarah Pocket's
there! And Georgiana's there! Now you all know where to take
your stations when you come to feast upon me. And now go! '

At the mention of each name she had struck the table with her
stick in a new place. She now said, 'Walk me, walk me!' and we
went on again.

'I suppose there's nothing to be done,' exclaimed Camilla, ^but
comply and depart. It's something to have seen the object of one's
bve and duty, even for so short a time. I shall think of it with a

84. GREAT EXPECTATIONS

melancholy satisfaction when I wake up in the night. I wish
Matthew could have that comfort, but he sets it at defiance. I am
determined not to make a display of my feelings, but it's hard to
be told one wants to feast on one's relations — as if one was a
Giant — and to be told to go. The bare idea!'

Mr. Camilla interposing, as Mrs. Camilla laid her hand upon
her heaving bosom, that lady assumed an unnatural fortitude of
manner which I supposed to be expressive of an intention to drop
and choke when out of view, and kissing her hand to Miss Havi-
sham, was escorted forth. Sarah Pocket and Georgiana contended
who should remain last; but, Sarah was too knowing to be out-
done, and ambled round Georgiana with that artful slipperiness,
that the latter was obliged to take precedence. Sarah Pocket then
made her separate effect of departing with 'Bless you, Miss Havi-
sham dear!' and w^ith a smile of forgiving pity on her walnut-shell
countenance for the weaknesses of the rest.

While Estella was away lighting them down, Miss Havisham
still walked with her hand on my shoulder, but more and more
slowly. At last she stopped before the fire, and said, after mut-
tering and looking at it some seconds:

'This is my birthday, Pip.'

I was going to wish her many happy returns, when she lifted
her stick.

'I don't suffer it to be spoken of. I don't suffer those who were
here just now, or any one, to speak of it. They come here on the
day, but they dare not refer to it.'

Of course / made no further effort to refer to it.

'On this day of the year, long before you were born, this heap
of decay,' stabbing with her crutched stick at the pile of cobwebs
on the table but not touching it, 'was brought here. It and I have
worn away together. The mice have gnawed at it, and sharper
teeth than teeth of mice have gnawed at me.'

She held the head of her stick against her heart as she stood
looking at the table; she in her once white dress, all yellow and
withered ; the once white cloth all yellow and withered ; everything
around, in a state to crumble under a touch.

'When the ruin is complete,' said she, with a ghastly look, 'and
when they lay me dead, in my bride's dress on the bride's table —

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 85

which shall be done, and which will be the finished curse upon
him — so much the better if it is done on this day!'

She stood looking at the table as if she stood looking at her
own figure lying there. I remained quiet. Estella returned, and she
too remained quiet. It seemed to me that we continued thus a long
time. In the heavy air of the room, and the heavy darkness that
brooded in its remoter corners, I even had an alarming fancy that
Estella and I might presently begin to decay.

At length, not coming out of her distraught state by degrees,
but in an instant, Miss Havisham said, 'Let me see you two play
at cards; why have you not begun?' With that, we returned to
her room, and sat down as before ; I was beggared, as before ; and
again, as before, Miss Havisham watched us all the time, directed
my attention to Estella's beauty, and made me notice it the more
by trying her jewels on Estella's breast and hair.

Estella, for her part, likewise treated me as before; except that
she did not condescend to speak. When we had played some half-
dozen games, a day was appointed for my return, and I was taken
down into the yard to be fed in the former dog-like manner. There,
too, I was again left to wander about as I liked.

It is not much to the purpose whether a gate in that garden wall
which I had scrambled up to peep over on the last occasion was,
on that last occasion, open or shut. Enough that I saw no gate
then, and that I saw one now. As it stood open, and as I knew
that Estella had let the visitors out — for, she had returned with
the keys in her hand — I strolled into the garden, and strolled all
over it. It was quite a wilderness, and there were old melon-frames
and cucumber frames in it, which seemed in their decline to have
produced a spontaneous growth of weak attempts at pieces of old
hats and boots, with now and then a weedy offshoot into the like-
ness of a battered saucepan.

When I had exhausted the garden and a green-house with noth-
ing in it but a fallen-down grape-vine and some bottles, I found
myself in the dismal corner upon which I had looked out of win-
dow. Never questioning for a moment that the house was now
empty, I looked in at another window, and found myself, to my
great surprise, exchanging a broad stare with a pale young gentle-
man with red evelids and light hair.

86 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

This pale young gentleman quickly disappeared, and reappeared
beside me. He had been at his books when I had found myself
staring at him, and I now saw that he was inky.

'Halloa I' said he, 'young fellow!'

Halloa being a general observation which I had usually observed
to be best answered by itself, / said 'Halloa!' politely omittmg
young fellow.

'Who let you in?' said he.

'Miss Estella.'

'Who gave you leave to prowl about?'

'Miss Estella.'

'Come and fight,' said the pale young gentleman.

What could I do but follow him? I have often asked myself
the question since: but, what else could I do? His manner was so
final and I was so astonished, that I followed where he led, as if
I had been under a spell.

'Stop a minute, though,' he said, wheeling round before we
had gone many paces. 'I ought to give you a reason for fighting,
too. There it is!' In a most irritating manner he instantly slapped
his hands against one another, daintily flung one of his legs up
behind him, pulled my hair, slapped his hands again, dipped his
head, and butted it into my stomach.

The bull-like proceeding last mentioned, besides that it was
unquestionably to be regarded in the light of a liberty, was par-
ticularly disagreeable just after bread and meat. I therefore hit out
at him, and was going to hit out again, when he said, 'Aha! Would
you?' and began dancing backwards and forwards in a manner
quite unparalleled within my limited experience.

Taws of the game!' said he. Here, he skipped from his left
leg on to his right. 'Regular rules!' Here, he skipped from his
right leg on to his left. 'Come to the ground, and go through the
preliminaries!' Here, he dodged backwards and forwards, and did
all sorts of things while I looked helplessly at him.

I was secretly afraid of him when I saw him so dexterous; but,
I felt morally and physically convinced that his light head of hair
could have had no business in the pit of my stomach, and that I
had a right to consider it irrelevant when so obtruded on my atten-
tion. Therefore. I followed him. vdthout a word, to a retired nook

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 87

of the garden, formed by the junction of two walls, and screened by
by some rubbish. On his asking me if I was satisfied with the
ground, and on my replying Yes, he begged my leave to absent
himself for a moment, and quickly returned with a bottle of water
and a sponge dipped in vinegar. Available for both,' he said,
placing these against the wall. And then fell to pulling off, not only
his jacket and waistcoat, but his shir^ too, in a manner at once
light-hearted, business-like, and blood-thirsty.

Although he did not look very healthy — having pimples on his
face, and a breaking out on his mouth — these dreadful preparations
quite appalled me. I judged him to be about my own age, but he
was much taller, and he had a way of spinning himself about that
was full of appearance. For the rest, he was a young gentleman in
a grey suit (when not denuded for battle), with his elbows, knees,
wrists, and heels considerably in advance of the rest of him as to
development.

My heart failed me when I saw him squaring at me with every
demonstration of mechanical nicety, and eyeing my anatomy as if
he were minutely choosing his bone. I never have been so surprised
in my life, as I was when I let out the first blow, and saw him lying
on his back, looking up at me with a bloody nose and his face ex-
ceedingly foreshortened.

But, he was on his feet directly, and after sponging himself with
a great show of dexterity began squaring again. The second great-
est surprise I have ever had in my life was seeing him on his back
again, looking up at me out of a black eye.

His spirit inspired me with great respect. He seemed to have no
strength, and he never once hit me hard, and he was always
knocked down; but, he would be up again in a moment, sponging
himself or drinking out of the water-bottle, with the greatest satis-
faction in seconding himself according to form, and then came at
me with an air and a show that made me believe he really was going
to do for me at last. He got heavily bruised, for I am sorry to
record that the more I hit him, the harder I hit him ; but, he came
up again and again and again, until at last he got a bad fall with
the back of his head against the wall. Even after that crisis in our
affairs, he got up and turned round and round confusedly a few
times, not knowing where I was; but finally went on his knees to

88 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

his sponge and threw it up: at the same time panting out, That
means you have won.'

He seemed so brave and innocent^ that although I had not pro-
posed the contest, I felt but a gloomy satisfaction in my victory.
Indeed, I go so far as to hope that I regarded myself while dressing,
as a species of savage young wolf, or other wild beast. However, I
^ot dressed, darkly wiping my sanguinary face at intervals, and
I said, ^Can I help you?' and he said, 'No thankee,' and I said,
*Good afternoon,' and he said, 'Same to you.'

When I got into the court-yard, I found Estella waiting with the
keys. But, she neither asked me where I had been, nor why I had
kept her waiting; and there was a bright flush upon her face, as
though something had happened to delight her. Instead of going
straight to the gate, too, she stepped back into the passage, and
beckoned me.

'Come here! You may kiss me if you like.'

I kissed her cheek as she turned it to me. I think I would have
gone through a great deal to kiss her cheek. But, I felt that the
kiss was given to the coarse common boy as a piece of money might
have been, and that it was worth nothing.

What with the birthday visitors, and what with the cards, and
what with the fight, my stay had lasted so long, that when I neared
home the light on the spit of sand off the point on the marshes
was gleaming against a black night-sky, and Joe's furnace was
flinging a path of fire across the road.

CHAPTER XII

My mind grew very uneasy on the subject of the pale young gentle-
man. The more I thought of the fight, and recalled the pale young
gentleman on his back in various stages of puffy and incrimsoned
countenance, the more certain it appeared that something would be
done to me. I felt that the pale young gentleman's blood was on
my head, and that the Law would avenge it. Without having any
definite idea of the penalties I had incurred, it was clear to me
that village boys could not go stalking about the country, ravaging

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 89

the houses of gentlefolks and pitching into the studious youth of
England, without laying themselves open to severe punishment.
For some days, I even kept close at home, and looked out at the
kitchen door with the greatest caution and trepidation before go-
ing on an errand, lest the officers of the County Jail should pounce
upon me. The pale young gentleman's nose had stained my trous-
ers, and I tried to wash out that evidence of my guilt in the dead
of night. I had cut my knuckles against the pale young gentleman's
teeth, and I twisted my imagination into a thousand tangles, as I
devised incredible ways of accounting for that damnatory circum •
stance when I should be haled before the Judges.

When the day came round for my return to the scene of the
deed of violence, my terrors reached their height. Whether myrmi-
dons of Justice, specially sent down from London, w^ould be lying
in ambush behind the gate? Whether Miss Havisham, preferring
to take personal vengeance for an outrage done to her house, might
rise in those grave-clothes of hers, draw a pistol, and shoot me
dead? Whether suborned boys — a numerous band of mercenaries
— might be engaged to fall upon me in the brewery, and cuff me
until I was no more? It was high testimony to my confidence in
the spirit of the pale young gentleman, that I never imagined
him accessory to these retaliations ; they always came into my mind
as the acts of injudicious relatives of his, goaded on by the state of
his visage and an indignant sympathy with the family features.

However, go to INIiss Havisham's I must, and go I did. And be-
hold I nothing came of the late struggle. It was not alluded to in
any way, and no pale young gentleman was to be discovered on the
premises. I found the same gate open, and I explored the garden,
and even looked in at the windows of the detached house; but,
my view was suddenly stopped by the closed shutters within, and
all was lifeless. Only in the corner where the combat had taken
place, could I detect any evidence of the young gentlman's exist-
ence. There were traces of his gore in that spot, and I covered
them with garden-mould from the eye of man.

On the broad landing between Miss Havisham's own room and
that other room in which the long table was laid out, I saw a gar-
den-chair— a light chair on wheels, that you pushed from behind.
It had been placed there since my last visit, and I entt^red, that

90 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

same day, on a regular occupation of pushing Miss Havisham in
this chair (when she was tired of walking with her hand upon my
shoulder) round her own room, and across the landing, and round
the other room. Over and over and over again, we would make
these journeys, and sometimes they would last as long as three
hours at a stretch. I insensibly fall into a general mention of these
journeys as numerous, because it was at once settled that I should
return every alternate day at noon for these purposes, and because
I am now going to sum up a period of at least eight or ten months.

As we began to be more used to one another. Miss Havisham
talked more to me, and asked me such questions as what had 1
learnt and what was I going to be? I told her I was going to be
apprenticed to Joe, I believed; and I enlarged upon my knowing
nothing and wanting to know everything, in the hope that she
might offer some help towards that desirable end. But, she did not;
on the contrary, she seemed to prefer my being ignorant. Neither
did she ever give me any money or anything but my daily dinner
— nor even stipulate that I should be paid for my services.

Estella was always about, and always let me in and out, but
never told me I might kiss her again. Sometimes, she would coldly
tolerate me; sometimes, she would condescenc :o me; sometimes,
she would be quite familiar with me ; sometimes, sne would tell me
energetically that she hated me. Miss Havisham would often ask
me in a whisper, or when we were alone, 'Does she grow prettier
and prettier, Pip?' And when I said Yes (for indeed she did),
would seem to enjoy it greedily. Also, when we played at cards
Miss Havisham would look on, with a miserly relish of Estella's
moods, whatever they were. And sometimes, when her moods
were so many and contradictory of one another that I was puzzled
what to say or do, Miss Havisham would embrace her with lavish
fondness, murmuring something in her ear that sounded like 'Break
their hearts, my pride and hope, break their hearts and have no
mercy!'

There was a song Joe used to hum fragments of at the forge, of
which the burden was Old Clem. This was not a very ceremonious
way of rendering homage to a patron saint; but I believe Old Clem
stood in that relation towards smiths. It was a song that imitated
the measure of beating upon iron, and was a mere lyrical excuse for

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 91

the introduction ol Old Clem's respected name. Thus, you were to
hammer boys round — Old Clem ! With a thump and a sound — Old
Clem! Beat it out, beat it out — Old Clem! With a clink for the
stout — Old Clem! Blow the fire, blow the fire — Old Clem! Roar-
ing dryer, soaring higher — Old Clem! One day soon after the
appearance of the chair. Miss Havisham suddenly saying to me,
with the impatient movement of her fingers, 'There, there, there!
Sing!' I was surprised into crooning this ditty as I pushed her over
the floor. It happened so to catch her fancy that she took it up
in a low brooding voice as if she were singing in her sleep. After
that, it became customary with us to have it as we moved about,
and Estella would often join in; though the whole strain was so
subdued, even when there were three of us, that it made less noise
in the grim old house than the lightest breath of wind.

What could I become with these surroundings? How could my
character fail to be influenced by them? Is it to be wondered at if
my thoughts were dazed, as my eyes were, when I came out into the
natural light from the misty yellow rooms?

Perhaps I might have told Joe about the pale young gentleman,
if I had not previously been betrayed into those enormous in-
ventions to which I had confessed. Under the circumstances, I
felt that Joe could hardly fail to discern in the pale young gentle-
man, an appropriate passenger to be put into the black velvet
coach; therefore, I said nothing of him. Besides: that shrinking
from having Miss Havisham and Estella discussed, which had come
upon me in the beginning, grew much more potent as time went
on. I reposed complete confidence in no one but Biddy; but, I
told poor Biddy everything. Why it came natural for me to do so,
and why Biddy had a deep concern in everything I told her, I did
not know then, though I think I know now.

Meanwhile, councils went on in the kitchen at home, fraught
with almost insupportable aggravation to my exasperated spirit.
That ass, Pumblechook, used often to come over of a night for the
purpose of discussing my prospects with my sister; and I really
do believe (to this hour with less penitence than I ought to feel),
that if these hands could have taken a linch pin out of his chaise-
cart, they would have done it. The miserable man was ? man of
that confined stolidity of mind, that he could not discuss my pros-

B^

92 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

pects without having me before him — as it were, to operate upon —
and he would drag me up from my stool (usually by the collar)
where I was quiet in a corner, and, putting me before the fire as
if I were going to be cooked, would begin by saying, 'Now, Mum,
here is this boy! Here is this boy which you brought up by hand.
Hold up your head, boy, and be for ever grateful unto them
which so did do. Now, Mum, with respections to this boy!' And
then he would rumple my hair the wrong way — which from my
earliest remembrance, as already hinted, I have in my soul denied
the right of any fellow-creature to do — and would hold me before
him by the sleeve: a spectacle of imbecility only to be equalled
by himself.

Then, he and my sister would pair off in such nonsensical specu-
lations about Miss Havisham, and about what she would do with
me and for me, that I used to want — quite painfully — to burst
into spiteful tears, fly at Pumblechook, and pummel him all over.
In these dialogues, my sister spoke to me as if she were morally
wrenching one of my teeth out at every reference; while Pumble-
chook himself, self-constituted my patron, would sit supervising
me with a depreciatory eye, like the architect of my fortunes who
thought himself engaged in a very unremunerative job.

In these discussions, Joe bore no part. But he was often talked
at, while they were in progress, by reason of Mrs. Joe's perceiving
that he was not favourable to my being taken from the forge. I
was fully old enough now, to be apprenticed to Joe ; and when Joe
sat with the poker on his knees thoughtfully raking out the ashes
between the lower bars, my sister would so distinctly construe that
innocent action into opposition on his part, that she would dive at
liim, take the poker out of his hands, shake him, and put it away.
There was a most irritating end to every one of these debates. All
in a moment, with nothing to lead up to it, my sister would stop
herself in a yawn, and catching sight of me as it were incidentally,
would swoop upon me with 'Come! there's enough of you\ You
get along to bed; you\Q, given trouble enough for one night, I
hope! ' As if I had besought them as a favour to bother my life out.

We went on in this way for a long time, and it seemed likely
that we should continue to go on in this way for a long time, when.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 93

one day, Miss Havisham stopped short as she and I were walking,
she leaning on my shoulder; and said with some displeasure:

'You are growing tall, Pip!'

I thought it best to hint, through the medium of a meditative
look, that this might be occasioned by circumstances over which
I had no control.

She said no more at the time; but, she presently stopped and
looked at me again; and presently again; and after that, looked
frowning and moody. On the next day of my attendance, when our
usual exercise was over, and I had landed her at her dressing-table,
she stayed me with a movement of her impatient fingers:

Tell me the name again of that blacksmith of yours.'

'Joe Gargery, ma'am.'

'Meaning the master you were to be apprenticed to?*

'Yes, Miss Havisham.'

'You had better be apprenticed at once. Would Gargery come
here with you, and bring your indentures, do you think?'

I signified that I had no doubt he would take it as an honour to
be asked.

'Then let him come.'

'At any particular time. Miss Havisham?'

'There, there! I know nothing about times. Let him come soon,
and come alone with you.'

When I got home at night, and delivered this message for Joe,
my sister 'went on the Rampage,' in a more alarming degree than
at any previous period. She asked me and Joe whether we supposed
she was door-mats under our feet, and how we dared to use her so,
and what company we graciously thought she was fit for? When
she had exhausted a torrent of such inquiries, she threw a candle-
stick at Joe, burst into a loud sobbing, got out the dustpan — which
was always a very bad sign — put on her coarse apron, and began
cleaning up to a terrible extent. Not satisfied with a dry cleaning,
she took to a pail and scrubbing-brush, and cleaned us out of the
house and home, so that we stood shivering in the back-yard.
It was ten o'clock at night before we ventured to creep in again,
and then she asked Joe why he had not married a Negress Slave
at once? Joe offered no answer, poor fellow, but stood feeling his

94 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

whiskers and looking dejectedly at me, as if he thought it really
might have been a better speculation.

CHAPTER XIII

It was a trial to my feelings, on the next day but one, to see Joe
arraying himself in his Sunday clothes to accompany me to Miss
Havisham's. Howe er as he thought his court-suit necessary to
the occasion, it was not for me to tell him that he looked far better
in his working dress ; the rather, because I knew he made himself so
dreadfully uncomfortable entirely on my account, and that it was
for me he pulled up his shirt collar so very high behind, and that it
made the hair on the crown of his head stand up like a tuft of
feathers.

At breakfast-time my sister declared her intention of going
to town with us, and being left at Uncle Pumblchook's and called
for 'when we had done with our fine ladies' — a way of putting the
case, from which Joe appeared inclined to augur the worst. The
forge was shut up for the day, and Joe inscribed in chalk upon
the door (as it was his custom to do on the very rare occasions
when he was not at work) the monosyllable hout, accompanied
by a sketch of an arrow supposed to be flying in the direction he
had taken.

We walked to town, my sister leading the way in a very large
beaver bonnet, and carrying a basket like the Great Seal of Eng-
land in plaited straw, a pair of pattens, a spare shawl, and an um-
brella, though it was a fine bright day. I am not quite clear whether
these articles were carried penitentially or ostentatiously; but, I
rather think they were displayed as articles of property — much
as Cleopatra or any other sovereign lady on the Rampage might
exhibit her wealth in a pageant or procession.

When we came to Pumblechook's, my sister bounced in and left
us. As it was almost noon, Joe and I held straight on to Miss
Havisham's house. Estella opened the gate as usual, and, the
moment she appeared, Joe took his hat off and stood weighing it

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 95

by the brim in both his hands: as if he had some urgent reason in
his mind for being particular to half a quarter of an ounce.

Estella took no notice of either of us, but led us the way that I
knew so well, I followed next to her, and Joe came last. When I
looked back at Joe in the long passage, he was still weighing his
hat with the greatest care, and was coming after us in long strides
on the tips of his toes.

Estella told me we were both to go in, so I took Joe by the coat-
cuff and conducted him into Miss Havisham's presence. She was
seated at her dressing-table, and looked round at us immediately.

'Oh!' said she to Joe. 'You are the husband of the sister of this
boy?'

I could hardly have imagined dear old Joe looking so unlike him-
self or so like some extraordinary bird; standing, as he did, speech-
less, with his tuft of feathers ruffled, and his mouth open as if he
wanted a worm.

'You are the husband,' repeated Miss Havisham, 'of the sister
of this boy?'

It was very aggravating; but, throughout the interview, Joe
persisted in addressing Me instead of Miss Havisham.

'Which I meantersay, Pip,' Joe now observed, in a manner that
was at once expressive of forcible argumentation, strict confidence,
and great politeness, 'as I hup and married your sister, and I were
at the time what you might call (if you was any ways inclined)
a single man.'

'Well!' said Miss Havisham. 'And you have reared the boy,
with the intention of taking him for your apprentice; is that so,
Mr. Gargery?'

'You know, Pip,' replied Joe, 'as you and me were ever friends,
and it were looked for'ard to betwixt us, as being calc'lated to
lead to larks. Not but what, Pip, if you had ever made objections
to the business — such as its being open to black and sut, or such-
like— not but what they would have been attended to, don't you
see?'

'Has the boy,' said Miss Havisham, 'ever made any objection?
Does he like the trade?'

'Which it is well beknown to yourself, Pip,' returned Joe,
strengthening his former mixture of argumentation, confidence,

96 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

and politeness, 'that it were the wish of your own hart.' (I saw the
idea suddenly break upon him that he would adapt his epitaph to
the occasion, before he went on to say) 'And there weren't no
objection on your part, and Pip it were the great wish of your hart ! '

It was quite in vain for me to endeavour to make him sensible
that he ought to speak to Miss Havisham. The more I made faces
and gestures to him to do it, the more confidential, argumentative,
and polite, he persisted in being to Me.

'Have you brought his indentures with you?' asked Miss Havi-
sham.

'Well, Pip, you know,' replied Joe, as if that were a little un-
reasonable, 'you yourself see me put 'em in my 'at, and therefore
you know as they are here.' With which he took them out, and
gave them, not to Miss Havisham, but to me. I am afraid I was
ashamed of the dear good fellow — I know I was ashamed of him —
when I saw that Estella stood at the back of Miss Havisham's
chair, and that her eyes laughed mischievously. I took the inden-
tures out of his hand and gave them to Miss Havisham.

'You expected,' said Miss Havisham, as she looked them over,
'no premium with the boy?'

'Joe!' I remonstrated; for he made no reply at all. 'Why don't
you answer — '

'Pip/ returned Joe, cutting me short as if he were hurt, ^which
I meantersay that were not a question requiring a answer betwixt
yourself and me, and which you know the answer to be full well
No. You know it to be No, Pip, and wherefore should I say it?'

Miss Havisham glanced at him as if she understood what he
really was, better than I had thought possible, seeing what he
was there; and took up a little bag from the table beside her.

Tip has earned a premium here,' she said, 'and here it is.
There are five-and-twenty guineas in this bag. Give it to your mas-
ter, Pip.'

As if he were absolutely out of his mind with the wonder
awakened in him by her strange figure and the strange room, Joe,
^ven at this pass, persisted in addressing me.

'This is very liberal on your part, Pip,' said Joe, 'and it is as
such received and grateful welcome, though never looked for,
far nor near nor nowheres. And now, old chap,' said Joe, conveying

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 97

to me a sensation, first of burning and then of freezing, for I felt
as if that famihar expression were appHed to Miss Havisham;
'and now, old chap, may we do our duty! May you and me do
our duty, both on us by one another, and by them which your
liberal present — have — conweyed — to be — for the satisfaction of
mind — of — them as never — ' here Joe showed that he felt he had
fallen into frightful difficulties, until he triumphantly rescued
himself with the words, 'and from myself far be it!' These words
had such a round and convincing sound for him that he said them
twice.

'Good-bye, Pip!' said Miss Havisham. 'Let them out Estella.'

'Am I to come again, Miss Havisham?' I asked.

'No. Gargery is your master now. Gargery! One word!'

Thus calling him back as I went out of the door, I heard her
say to Joe, in a distinct emphatic voice, 'The boy has been a good
boy here, and that is his reward. Of course, as an honest man
you will expect no other and no more.'

How Joe got out of the room, I have never been able to deter-
mine; but, I know that when he did get out he was steadily pro-
ceeding upstairs instead of coming down, and was deaf to all
remonstrances until I went after him and laid hold of him. In
another minute we were outside the gate, and it was locked, and
Estella was gone. When we stood in the daylight alone again,
Joe backed up against a wall, and said to me 'Astonishing!' And
there he remained so long, saying 'Astonishing!^ at intervals, so
often, that I began to think his senses were never coming back.
At length, he prolonged his remark into 'Pip, I do assure you
this is as-TON-ishing!' and so, by degrees, became conversational
and able to walk away.

I have reason to think that Joe's intellects were brightened by
the encounter they had passed through, and that on our way to
Pumblechook's he invented a subtle and deep design. My reason is
to be found in what took place in Mr. Pumblechook's parlour:
where, on our presenting ourselves, my sister sat in conference
with that detested seedsman.

'Well!' cried my sister, addressing us both at once. 'And what's
happened to you? I wonder you condescend to come back to such
poor society as this, I am sure I do!'

98 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

'Miss Havisham/ said Joe, with a fixed look at me, like an effort
of remembrance, 'made it wery partick'ler that we should give
her — were it compliments or respects, Pip?'

'Compliments,' I said.

'Which that were my own belief,' answered Joe — 'her compli-
ments to Mrs. J. Gargery — '

'Much good they'll do me! ' observed my sister: but rather grati-
fied too.

'And wishing,' pursued Joe, with another fixed look at me, like
another effort at remembrance, 'that the state of Miss Havisham's
elth were sitch as would have — allowed, were it, Pip?'

'Of her having the pleasure,' I added.

'Of ladies' company,' said Joe. And drew a long breath.

Well!' cried my sister, with a mollified glance at Mr. Pumble-
chook. 'She might have had the politeness to send that message at
first, but it's better late than never. And what did she give young
Rantipole here?'

'She giv' him,' said Joe, 'nothing.'

Mrs. Joe was going to break out, but Joe went on.

'What she giv'/ said Joe, 'she giv' to his friends. "And by his
friends," were her explanation, "I mean into the hands of his
sister, Mrs. J. Gargery." Them were her words; "Mrs. J. Gar-
gery." She mayn't have know'd,' added Joe, with an appearance of
reflection, 'whether it were Joe or Jorge.'

My sister looked at Pumblechook: who smoothed the elbows
of his wooden armchair, and nodded at her and at the fire, as if
he had known all about it beforehand.

'And how much have you got?' asked my sister, laughing.
Positively, laughing!

'What would present company say to ten pound?' demanded
Joe.

'They'd say,' returned my sister curtly, 'pretty well. Not too
much, but pretty well.'

'It's more than that, then,' said Joe.

That fearful imposter, Pumblechook, immediately nodded, and
said, as he rubbed the arms of his chair: 'It's more than that, Mum.'

'Why, you don't mean to say — ' began my sister.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 99

^Yes I do, Mum/ said Pumblechook; 'but wait a bit. Go on,
Joseph. Good in you! Go on I'

What would present company say,' proceeded Joe. 'to twenty
pound?'

'Handsome would be the word,' returned my sister.

'Well then,' said Joe, 'it's more than twenty pound.'

That abject hypocrite, Pumblechook, nooded again, and said
with a patronising laugh, 'It's more than that, Mum. Good
again ! Follow her up, Joseph ! '

'Then to make an end of it,' said Joe, delightedly handing the
bag to my sister; it's five-and-twenty pound.

'It's five-and-twenty pound, Mum,' echoed the beast of swind-
lers, Pumblechook, rising to shake hands with her; 'and it's no
more than your merits (as I said when my opinion was asked),
and I wish you joy of the money!'

If the villain had stopped here, his case would have been suffi-
ciently awful, but he blackened his guilt by proceeding to take
me into custody, with a right of patronage that left all his former
criminality far behind.

'Now you see, Joseph and wife,' said Mr. Pumblechook, as he
took me by the arm above the elbow, 'I am one of them that always
go right through with what they've begun. This boy must be
bound out of hand. That's my way. Bound out of hand.'

'Goodness knows. Uncle Pumblechook,' said my sister (grasping
the money), 'we're deeply beholden to you.'

'Never mind me. Mum,' returned that diabolical corn-chandler.
^A pleasure's a pleasure all the world over. But this boy, you
know; we must have him bound. I said I'd see to it — to tell you
the truth.'

The Justices were sitting in the Town Hall near at hand and we
at once went over to have me bound apprentice to Joe in the
Magisterial presence. I say, we w^ent over, but I was pushed over
by Pumblechook, exactly as if I had that moment picked a pocket
or fired a rick; indeed, it was the general impression in Court
that I had been taken red-handed; for, as Pumblechook shoved
me before him through the crowd, I heard some people say, 'What's
he done?' and others, 'He's a young'un, too, but looks bad, don't

100 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

he?' One person of mild and benevolent aspect even gave me a
tract ornamented with a woodcut of a malevolent young man fitted
up with a perfect sausage-shop of fetters, and entitled, To be read
IN MY Cell.

The Hall was a queer place, I thought, with higher pews in it
than a church — and with people hanging over the pews looking
on — and with mighty Justices (one with a powdered head) leaning
back in chairs, with folded arms, or taking snuff, or going to sleep,
or writing, or reading the newspapers — and with some shining
black portraits on the walls, which my unartistic eye regarded
as a composition of hardbake and sticking-plaister. Here, in a
corner, my indentures were duly signed and attested, and I was
'bound'; Mr. Pumblechook holding me all the while as if we had
looked in on our way to the scaffold, to have those little prelimin-
aries disposed of.

When we had come out again, and had got rid of the boys
who had been put into great spirits by the expectation of seeing
me pubHcly tortured, and who were much disappointed to find
that my friends were merely rallying round me, we went back to
Pumblechook's. And there my sister became so excited by the
twenty-five guineas, that nothing would serve her but we must
have a dinner out of that windfall, at the Blue Boar, and that
Mr. Pumblechook must go over in his chaise-cart, and bring the
Hubbies and Mr. Wopsle.

It was agreed to be done ; and a most melancholy day I passed.
For, it inscrutably appeared to stand to reason, in the minds of
the whole company, that I was an excrescence on the entertain-
ment. And to make it worse, they all asked me from time to
time — in short, whenever they had nothing else to do — why I
didn't enjoy myself? And what could I possibly do then, but say
that I was enjoying myself — when I wasn't!

However, they were grown up and had their own way, and made
the most of it. That swindling Pumblechook, exalted into the
beneficent contriver of the whole occasion, actually took the top
of the table; and, when he addressed them on the subject of
my being bound, and had fiendishly congratulated them on my
being liable to imprisonment if I played at cards, drank strong
liquors, kept late hours or bad company, or indulged in other

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 101

vagaries which the form of my indentures appeared to contemplate
as next to inevitable, he placed me standing on a chair beside him
to illustrate his remarks.

My only other remembrances of the great festival are, That
they wouldn't let me go to sleep, but whenever they saw me
dropping off, woke me up and told me to enjoy myself. That, rather
late in the evening, Mr. Wopsle gave us Collins's ode, and threw
his blood-stain'd sword in thunder down, with such effect that
a waiter came in and said. The Commercials underneath sent
up their compliments, and it wasn't the Tumblers' Arms.' That
they were all in excellent spirits on the road home, and sang O
Lady Fair! Mr. Wopsle taking the bass, and asserting with a
tremendously strong voice (in reply to the inquisitive bore who
leads that piece of music in a most impertinent manner, by
wanting to know all about everybody's private affairs) that he
was the man with his white locks flowing, and that he was upon the
whole the weakest pilgrim going.

Finally, I remember that when I got into my little bedroom,
I was truly wretched, and had a strong conviction on me that I
should never Hke Joe's trade. I had liked it once, but once was not
now.

CHAPTER XIV

It is a most miserable thing to feel ashamed of home. There may
be black ingratitude in the thing, and the punishment may be retri-
butive and well deserved; but, that it is a miserable thing, I
can testify.

Home had never been a very pleasant place to me, because of
my sister's temper. But, Joe had sanctified it and I believed in it.
I had believed in the best parlour as a most elegant saloon ; I had
believed in the front door, as a mysterious portal of the Temple
of State whose solemn opening was attended with a sacrifice of
roast fowls; I had believed in the kitchen as a chaste though not
magnificent apartment; I had believed in the forge as the glowing
road to manhood and independence. Within a single year all this
was changed. Now, it was all coarse and common, and I would not
have had Miss Havisham and Estella see it on any account.

102 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

How much of my ungracious condition of mind may have been
my own fault, how much Miss Havisham's, how much my sister's,
is now of no moment to me or to any one. The change was made in
me; the thing was done. Well or ill done, excusably or inexcus-
ably, it was done.

Once, it had seemed to me that when I should at last roll up my
shirt sleeves and go into the forge, Joe's 'prentice, I should be dis-
tinguished and happy. Now the reality was in my hold, I only felt
that I was dusty with the dust of the small coal, and that I had a
weight upon my daily remembrance to which the anvil was a
feather. There have been occasions in my later life (I suppose as
in most lives) when I have felt for a time as if a thick curtain had
fallen on all its interest and romance, to shut me out from any-
thing save dull endurance any more. Never has that curtain
dropped so heavy and blank, as when my way in life lay stretched
out straight before me through the newly-entered road of appren-
ticeship to Joe.

I remember that at a later period of my 'time,' I used to stand
about the churchyard on Sunday evenings, when night was falling,
comparing my own perspective with the windy marsh view, and
making out some likeness between them by thinking how flat and
low both were, and how on both there came an unknown way and
a dark mist and then the sea. I was quite as dejected on the first
working-day of my apprenticeship as in that after-time; but I am
glad to know that I never breathed a murmur to Joe while my in-
dentures lasted. It is about the only thing I am glad to know of
myself in that connection.

For, though it includes what I proceed to add, all the merit of
what I proceed to add was Joe's. It was not because I was faithful,
but because Joe was faithful, that I never ran away and went for a
soldier or a sailor. It was not because I had a strong sense of the
virtue of industry, but because Joe had a strong sense of the virtue
of industry, that I worked with tolerable zeal against the grain.
It is not possible to know how far the influence of any amiable
honest-hearted duty-going man flies out into the world; but it is
very possible to know how it has touched one's self in going by,
and I know right well that any good that inter-mixed itself with my

i

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 103

apprenticeship came of plain contented Joe, and not of restless as-
piring discontented me.

What I wanted, who can say? How can / say, when I never
knew? What I dreaded was, that in some unlucky hour I, being
at my grimiest and commonest, should lift up my eyes and see
Estella looking in at one of the wooden windows of the forge. I
was haunted by the fear that she would, sooner or later, find me
out, with a black face and hands, doing the coarsest part of my
work, and would exult over m.e and despise me. Often after dark,
when I was pulling the bellows for Joe, and we were singing Old
Clem, and when the thought how we used to sing it at Miss Havi-
sham's would seem to show me Estella's face in the fire, with her
pretty hair fluttering in the wind and her eyes scorning me, — often
at such a time I would look toward those panels of black night in
the wall which the wooden windows then were, and would fancy
that I saw her just drawing her face away ; and would believe that
she had come at last.

A.fter that, when we went in to supper, the place and the meal
W'^uld have a more homely look than ever, and I would feel more
ashamed of home than ever, in my own ungracious breast.

CHAPTER XV

As I was getting too big for Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt's room, my
education under that preposterous female terminated. Not, how-
ever, until Biddy haa imparted to me everything she knew, from
the little catalogue of prices, to a comic song she had once bought
for a halfpenny. Although the only coherent part of the latter piece
of literature were the opening lines,

When I went to Lunnon town sirs,
Too rul loo rul
Too rul loo rul

Wasn't I done very brown sirs?

Too rul loo rul
Too rul loo rul

104 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

— still, in my desire to be wiser, I got this composition by heart
with the utmost gravity; nor do I recollect that I questioned its
merit, except that I thought (as I still do) the amount of Too rul
somewhat in excess of the poetry. In my hunger for information, I
made proposals to Mr. Wopsle to bestow some intellectual crumbs
upon me; with which he kindly complied. As it turned out, how-
ever, that he only wanted me for a dramatic lay-figure, to be con-
tradicted and embraced and wept over and bullied and clutched
and stabbed and knocked about in a variety of ways, I soon de-
clined that course of instruction ; though not until Mr. Wopsle in
his poetic fury had severely mauled me.

Whatever I acquired, I tried to impart to Joe. This statement
sounds so well, that I cannot in my conscience let it pass unex-
plained. I wanted to make Joe less ignorant and common, that he
might be worthier of my society and less open to Estella's reproach.

The old Battery out on the marshes was our place of study, and
a broken slate and a short piece of slate pencil were our educa-
tional implements: to which Joe always added a pipe of tobacco. I
never knew Joe to remember anything from one Sunday to an-
other, or to acquire, under my tuition, any piece of information
whatever. Yet he would smoke his pipe at the Battery with a far
more sagacious air than anywhere else — even with a learned air — ■
as if he considered himself to be advancing immensely. Dear fel-
low, I hope he did.

It was pleasant and quiet, out there with the sails on the river
passing beyond the earthwork, and sometimes, when the tide was
low, looking as if they belonged to sunken ships that were still
sailing on at the bottom of the water. Whenever I watched the
vessels standing out to sea with their white sails spread, I some-
how thought of Miss Havisham and Estella; and whenever the
light struck aslant, afar off, upon a cloud or sail or green hill-side
or water-line, it was just the same. — Miss Havisham and Estella
and the strange house and the strange life appeared to have some-
thing to do with everything that was picturesque.

One Sunday when Joe, greatly enjoying his pipe, had so plumed
himself on being 'most awful dull,' that I had given him up for the
day, I lay on the earthwork for some time with my chin on my
hand, descrying traces of Miss Havisham and Estella all over the

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 105

prospect, in the sky and in the water, until at last I resolved to
mention a thought concerning them that had been much in my
head.

'Joe,' said I ; 'don't you think I ought to pay Miss Havisham a
visit?'

Well, Pip,' returned Joe, slowly considering. What for?'

What for, Joe? What is any visit made for?'

There is some wisits p'r'aps,' said Joe, 'as for ever remains open
to the question, Pip. But in regard of wisiting Miss Havisham.
She might think you wanted something — expected something of
her.'

'Don't you think I might say that I did not, Joe?'

'You might, old chap,' said Joe. 'And she might credit it. Sim-
ilarly, she mightn't.'

Joe felt, as I did, that he had made a point there, and he pulled
hard at his pipe to keep himself from weakening it by repetition.

'You see, Pip,' Joe pursued, as soon as he was past that danger,
'Miss Havisham done the handsome thing by you. When Miss
Havisham done the handsome thing by you, she called me back to
say to me as that were all.'

'Yes, Joe. I heard her.'

'All,' Joe repeated, very emphatically.

'Yes, Joe. I tell you, I heard her.'

'Which I meantersay, Pip, it might be that her meaning were —
Make a end on it! — As you was! — Me to the North, and you to
the South! — Keep in sunders!'

I had thought of that too, and it was very far from comforting
me to find that he had thought of it ; for it seemed to render it more
probable.

'But, Joe.'

*Yes, old chap.'

'Here am I, getting on in the first year of my time, and, since the
day of my being bound I have never thanked Miss Havisham, or
asked after her, or shown that I remember her.'

'That's true, Pip; and unless you was to turn her out a set of
shoes all four round — and which I meantersay as even a set of
shoes all four round might not act acceptable as a present in a total
wacancy of hoofs — '

106 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

'I don't mean that sort of remembrance, Joe; I don't mean a
present.'

But Joe had got the idea of a present in his head and must harp
upon it. 'Or even,' said he, 'if you was helped to knocking her up
a new chain for the front door — or say a gross or two of shark-
headed screws for general use — or some light fancy article, such as
a toasting-fork when she took her muffins — or a gridiron when she
took a sprat or such like — '

'I don't mean any present at all, Joe,' I interposed.

'Well,' said Joe, still harping on it as though I had particularly
pressed it, 'if I was yourself, Pip, I wouldn't. No, I would not.
For what's a doorchain when she's got one always up? And shark-
headers is open to misrepresentations. And if it was a toasting-fork,
you'd go into brass and do yourself no credit. And the oncommon-
est workman can't show himself oncommon in a gridiron — for a
gridiron is a gridiron,' said Joe, steadfastly impressing it upon me,
as if he were endeavouring to rouse me from a fixed delusion, 'and
you may haim at what you like, but a gridiron it will come out,
either by your leave or against your leave, and you can't help
yourself — '

'My dear Joe,' I cried in desperation, taking hold of his coat,
Mon't go on in that way. I never thought of making Miss Hav-
isham any present.'

'No, Pip,' Joe assented, as if he had been contending for that all
along; 'and what I say to you is, you are right, Pip.'

'Yes, Joe; but what I wanted to say, was, that as we are rather
slack just now, if you would give me a half-holiday to-morrow, I
think I would go up-town and make a call on Miss Est — Hav-
isham.'

'Which her name,' said Joe gravely, 'ain't Estavisham, Pip, un-
less she have been rechris'ened.'

'I know, Joe, I know. It was a slip of mine. What do you think
of it, Joe?'

In brief, Joe thought that if I thought well of it, he thought well
of it. But, he was particular in stipulating that if I were not re-
ceived with cordiality, or if I were not encouraged to repeat my
visit as a visit which had no ulterior object, but was simply one of

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 107

gratitude for a favour received, then this experimental trip should
have no successor. By these conditions I promised to abide.

Now, Joe kept a journeyman at weekly wages whose name was
Orlick. He pretended that his christian name was Dolge — a clear
impossibility — but he was a fellow of that obstinate disposition that
I believe him to have been the prey of no delusion in this particular,
but wilfully to have imposed that name upon the village as an
affront to its understanding. He was a broad-shouldered loose-
limbed swarthy fellow of great strength, never in a hurry, and
always slouching. He never even seemed to come to his work
on purpose, but would slouch in as if by mere accident; and when
he went to the Jolly Bargemen to eat his dinner, or went away
at night, he would slouch out, like Cain or the Wandering Jew,
as if he had no idea where he was going, and no intention of ever
coming back. He lodged at a sluice-keeper's out on the marshes,
and on working days would come slouching from his hermitage,
with his hands in his pockets and his dinner loosely tied in a
bundle round his neck and dangling on his back. On Sundays
he mostly lay all day on sluice-gates, or stood against ricks and
barns. He always slouched, locomotively, with his eyes on the
ground; and, when accosted or otherwise required to raise them,
he looked up in a half resentful, half puzzled way, as though the
only thought he ever had, was, that it was rather an odd and
injurious fact that he should never be thinking.

This morose journeyman had no liking for me. When I was
very small and timid, he gave me to understand that the Devil
lived in a black corner of the forge, and that he knew the fiend
very well: also that it was necessary to m.ake up the fire, once in
seven years, with a live boy, and that I might consider myself
fuel. When I became Joe's 'prentice, Orlick was perhaps con-
firmed in some suspicion that I should displace him; howbeit,
he liked me still less. Not that he ever said anything, or did any-
thing, openly importing hostility; I only noticed that he always
beat his sparks in my direction, and that whenever I sang Old
Clem, he came in out of time.

Dolge Orlick was at work and present, next day, when I re-
minded Joe of my half-holiday. He said nothing at the moment,
for he and Joe had just got a piece of hot iron between them, and

108 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

I was at the bellows; but by and by he said, leaning on his
hammer:

'Xow, master! Sure you're not a-going to favour only one of
as. If young Pip has a half-holiday, do as much for Old Orlick.'
I suppose he was about five-and-twenty, but he usually spoke of
himself as an ancient person.

'Why, what '11 you do with a half-holiday, if you get it?' said Joe.

'What'll / do with it? What'll he do with it? Ill do as much
with it as /?/;?/,' said Orlick.

'As to Pip, he's going up-town,' said Joe.

'Well then, as to Old Orlick, he's a-going up-town,' retorted
that worthy. 'Two can go up-town. 'Tain't only one wot can
go up-town.'

'Don't lose your temper/ said Joe.

'Shall if I like,' growled Orlick. 'Some and their up-to\Miing!
Now, master! Come. Xo favouring in this shop. Be a man!'

The master refusing to entertain the subject until the journey-
man was in a better temper, Orlick plunged at the furnace, drew
out a red-hot bar, made at me with it as if he were going to
run it through my body, whisked it round my head, laid it on the
anvil, hammered it out — as if it were I, I thought, and the sparks
were my spirting blood — and finally said, when he nad hammered
himself hot and the iron cold, an he again leaned on his hammer:

'Xow% master!'

'Are you all right now?' demanded Joe.

'Ah! I am all right,' said gruff Old Orlick.

'Then, as in general you stick to your work as well as most men,'
said Joe, 'let it be a half-holiday for all.'

My sister had been standing silent in the yard, within hearing
— she was a most unscrupulous spy and listener — and she instantly
looked in at one of the windows.

Tike you, you fool!' said she to Joe, 'giving holidays to great
idle hulkers like that. You are a rich man, upon my life, to waste
wages in that way. I wish / was his master! '

'You'd be everybody's master if you durst,' retorted OrHck,
with an ill-favoured grin.

(Tet her alone,' said Joe.)

'I'd be a match for all noodles and all rogues,' returned my sister,

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 109

beginning to work herself into a mighty rage. 'And I couldn't
be a match for the noodles, without being a match for your
master, who's the dunder-headed king of the noodles. And I
couldn't be a match for the rogues without being a match for you,
who are the blackest-looking and the worst rogue between this
and France. Now!'

'You're a foul shrew. Mother Gargery,' growled the journey-
man. 'If that makes a judge of rogues, you ought to be a good 'un.'

('Let her alone, will you?' said Joe.)

'What did you say?' cried my sister, beginning to scream.
'What did you say? What did that fellow Orlick say to me, Pip?
What did he call me, with my husband standing by? O! O! O!'
Each of these exclamations was a shriek ; and I must remark of my
sister, what is equally true of all the violent women I have ever
seen, that passion was no excuse for her, because it is undeniable
that instead of lapsing into passion, she consciously and deliber-
ately took extraordinary pains to force herself into it, and be-
came blindly furious by regular stages; 'what was the name that
he gave me before the base man who swore to defend me? O!
Hold me! O!'

'Ah-h-h!' growled the journeyman, between his teeth, 'I'd hold
you if you was my wife. I'd hold you under the pump, and choke
it out of you.'

('I tell you, let her alone,' said Joe.)

'Oh! To hear him!' cried my sister, with a clap of her hands
and a scream together — which was her next stage. 'To hear
the names he's giving me! That Orlick! In my own house! Me
a married woman! With my husband standing by! O! O!' Here
my sister, after a fit of clappings and screamings, beat her hands
upon her bosom and upon her knees, and threw her cap off, and
pulled her hair down — which were the last stages on her road to
frenzy. Being by this time a perfect Fury and a complete suc-
cess, she made a dash at the door, which I had fortunately
locked.

What could the wretched Joe do now, after his disregarded
parenthetical interruptions, but stand up to his journeyman, and
ask him what he meant by interfering betwixt himself and Mrs.
Joe; and further whether he was man enough to come on? Old

110 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

Orlick felt that the situation admitted of nothing less than coming
on, and was on his defence straightway; so, without so much as
pulling off their singed and burnt aprons, they went at one another,
like two giants. But, if any man in that neighbourhood could
stand up long against Joe, I never saw the man. Orlick, as if
he had been of no more account than the pale young gentleman,
was very soon among the coal-dust, and in no hurry to come out
of it. Then, Joe unlocked the door and picked up my sister, who
had dropped insensible at the window (but who had seen the
fight first I think), and who was carried into the house and
laid down, and who was recommended to revive, and would do
nothing but struggle and clench her hands in Joe's hair. Then
came that singular calm and silence which succeed all uproars;
and then with the vague sensation which I have always con-
nected with such a lull — namely, that it was Sunday, and some-
body was dead — I went upstairs to dress myself.

When I came down again, I found Joe and Orlick sweeping
up, without any other traces of discomposure than a slit in one
of Orlick's nostrils, which was neither expressive nor ornamental.
A pot of beer had appeared from the Jolly Bargemen, and they
were sharing it by turns in a peaceable manner. The lull had
a sedative and philosophical influence on Joe, who followed me
out into the road to say, as a parting observation that might do
me good, 'On the Rampage, Pip, and off the Rampage, Pip; —
such is Life!'

With what absurd emotions (for, we think the feelings that
are very serious in a man quite comical in a boy) I found myself
again going to Miss Havisham's, matters little here. Nor, how
I passed and repassed the gate many times before I could make
up my mind to ring. Nor, how I debated whether I should go
away without ringing; nor, how I should undoubtedly have gone,
if my time had been my own, to come back.

Miss Sarah Pocket came to the gate. No Estella.

'How, then? You here again?' said Miss Pocket. 'What do
you want?'

When I said that I only came to see how Miss Havisham was,
Sarah evidently deliberated whether or no she should send me
about my business. But, unwilling to hazard the responsibility,

Old Orlick Among the Cinder^

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 111

she let me in, and presently brought the sharp message that 1
was to 'come up.'

Everything was unchanged, and Miss Havisham was alone.
'Well! ' said she fixing her eyes upon me. 'I hope you want nothing?
You'll get nothing.'

'No indeed, Miss Havisham. I only wanted you to know that I
am doing very well in my apprenticeship, and am always much
obliged to you.'

'There, there! ' with the old restless fingers. 'Come now and then;
come on your birthday. — Ay!' she cried suddenly, turning herself
and her chair towards me. 'You are looking round for Estella? Hey?'

I had been looking round — in fact, for Estella — and I stam-
mered that I hoped she was well.

'Abroad,' said Miss Havisham; 'educating for a lady; far out
of reach; prettier than ever; admired by all who see her. Do you
feel that you have lost her?'

There was such a malignant enjoyment in her utterance of the
last words, and she broke into such a disagreeable laugh, that I
was at a loss what to say. She spared me the trouble of considering,
by dismissing me. When the gate was closed upon me by Sarah
of the walnut-shell countenance, I felt more than ever dissatisfied
with my home and with my trade and with everything; and that
was all I took by that motion.

As I was loitering along the High Street, looking in discon-
solately at the shop w^indows, and thinking what I would buy
if I were a gentleman, who should come out of the bookshop
but Mr. Wopsle. Mr. Wopsle had in his hand the affecting
tragedy of George Barnwell, in which he had that moment in-
vested sixpence, with the view of heaping every word of it on the
head of Pumblechook, with whom he was going to drink tea. No
sooner did he see me, than he appeared to consider that a special
Providence had put a 'prentice in his way to be read at; and he
laid hold of me, and insisted on my accompanying him to the
Pumblechook parlour. As I knew it would be miserable at home,
and as the nights were dark and the way was dreary, and almost
any companionship on the road was better than none, I made no
great resistance; consequently, we turned into Pumblechook's
just as the street and the shops were lighting up.

112 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

As I never assisted at any other representation of George
Barnwell, I don't know how long it may usually take; but 1 know
very well that it took until half-past nine o'clock that night, and
that when Mr. Wopsle got into Newgate, I thought he never
would go to the scaffold, he became so much slower that at any
former period of his disgraceful career. I thought it a httle
too much that he should complain of being cut short in his flower
after all, as if he had not been running to seed, leaf after leaf,
ever since his course began. This, however, was a mere question
of length and wearisomeness. What stung me, was the identifi-
cation of the whole affair with my unoffending self. When Barn-
well began to go wrong, I declare I felt positively apologetic,
Pumblechook's indignant stare so taxed me with it. Wopsle, too,
took pains to present me in the worst light. At once ferocious and
maudlin, I was made to murder my uncle with no extenuating
circumstances whatever; Millwood put me down in argument, on
every occasion; it became sheer monomania in my master's
daughter to care a button for me; and all I can say for my gasp-
ing and procastinating conduct on the fatal morning is, that it
was worthy of the general feebleness of my character. Even
after I was happily hanged and Wopsle had closed the book, Pum-
blechook sat staring at me, and shaking his head, and saying,
'Take warning, boy, take warning!' as if it were a well-known
fact that I contemplated murdering a near relation, provided I
could only induce one to have the weakness to become my bene-
factor.

It was a very dark night when it was all over, and when I set out
with Mr. Wopsle on the walk home. Beyond town, we found a
heavy mist out, and it fell wet and thick. The turnpike lamp
was a blur, quite out of the lamp's usual place apparently, and its
rays looked solid substance on the fog. We were noticing this, and
saying how that the mist rose with a change of wind from a certain
quarter of our marshes, when we came upon a man, slouching
under the lee of the turnpike house.

'Halloa!' we said, stopping. 'Orlick there?'

Ah!' he answered, slouching out. 'I was -standing by, a minute,
on the chance of company.'

'You are late,' I remarked.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 113

Orlick not unnaturally answered, 'Well? And you^re late.'

'We have been/ said Mr. Wopsle, exalted with his late per-
formance, 'we have been indulging, Mr. Orlick, in an intellectual
evening.'

Old Orlick growled, as if he had nothing to say about that, and
we all went on together. I asked him presently whether he had
been spending his half-holiday up town and down town?

'Yes,' said he, 'all of it. I come in behind yourself. I didn't
see you, but I must have been pretty close behind you. By the
bye, the guns is going again.'

^At the Hulks?' said I.

'Ay! There's some of the birds flown from the cages. The guns
have been going since dark, about. You'll hear one presently.'

In effect, we had not walked many yards further, when the
well-remembered boom came towards us, deadened by the mist,
and heavily rolled away along the low grounds by the river, as if
it were pursuing and threatening the fugitives.

'A good night for cutting off in,' said Orlick. 'We'd be puzzled
how to bring down a jail-bird on the wing, to-night.'

The subject was a suggestive one to me, and I thought about
it in silence. Mr. Wopsle, as the ill-requited uncle of the evening's
tragedy, fell to meditating aloud in his garden at Camberwell.
Orlick, with his hands in his pockets, slouched heavily at my
side. It was very dark, very wet, very muddy, and so we splashed
along. Now and then, the sound of the signal cannon broke upon
us again, and again rolled sulkily along the course of the river. I
kept myself to myself and my thoughts. Mr. Wopsle died amiably
at Camberwell, and exceedingly game on Bosworth Field, and in
the greatest agonies at Glastonbury. Orlick sometimes growled,
'Beat it out, beat it out — old Clem! With a clink for the stout —
old Clem! ' I thought he had been drinking, but he was not drunk.

Thus, we came to the village. The way by which we approached
it, took us past the Three Jolly Bargemen, which we were sur-
prised to find — it being eleven o'clock — in a state of commotion,
with the door wide open, and unwonted lights that had been hastily
caught up and put down, scattered about. Mr. Wopsle dropped
in to ask what was the matter (surmising that a convict had been
taken), but came running out in a great hurry.

114 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

'There's something wrong/ said he, without stopping, 'up at
your place, Pip. Run all!'

'What is it?' I asked, keeping up with him. So did Orlick, at
my side.

'I can't quite understand. The house seems to have been violent-
ly entered when Joe Gargery was out. Supposed by convicts.
Somebody has been attacked and hurt.'

We were running too fast to admit of more being said, and we
made no stop until we got into our kitchen. It was full of people;
the whole village was there, or in the yard ; and there was a surgeon,
and there was Joe, and there was a group of women, all on the
floor in the midst of the kitchen. The unemployed bystanders
drew back when they saw me, and so I became aware of' my sister
— lying without sense or movement on the bare boards where she
had been knocked down by a tremendous blow on the back of
the head, dealt by some unknown hand when her face was turned
towards the fire — destined never to be on the Rampage again,
while she was the wife of Joe.

CHAPTER XVI

With my head full of George Barnwell I was at first disposed
to believe that / must have had some hand in the attack upon my
sister, or at all events that as her near relation, popularly known
io be under obligations to her, I was a more legitimate object
of suspicion than anyone else. But when, in the clearer light of
next morning, I began to reconsider the matter and to hear it
discussed around me on all sides, I took another view of the case,
which was more reasonable.

Joe had been at the Three Jolly Bargemen, smoking his pipe,
from a quarter after eight o'clock to a quarter before ten. While
he was there, my sister had been seen standing at the kitchen door
and had exchanged Good-Night with a farm-labourer going home.
The man could not be more particular as to the time at which
he saw her (he got into dense confusion when he tried to be)
than that it must have been before nine. When Joe went home

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 115

at five minutes before ten, he found her struck down on the floor,
and promptly called in assistance. The fire had not then burnt un-
usually low, nor was the snuff of the candle very long; the candle,
however, had- been blown out.

Nothing had been taken away from any part of the house.
Neither, beyond the blowing out of the candle — which stood on
a table between the door and my sister, and was behind her when
she stood facing the fire and was struck — was there any disarrange-
ment of the kitchen, excepting such as she herself had made, in
falling and bleeding. But, there was one remarkable piece of
evidence on the spot. She had been struck with something blunt
and heavy, on the head and spine; after the blows were dealt,
something heavy had been thrown down at her with considerable
violence, as she lay on her face. And on the ground beside her,
when Joe picked her up, was a convict's leg-iron which had been
filed asunder.

Now, Joe examining this iron with a smith's eye, declared it
to have been filed asunder some time ago. The hue and cry going
off to the Hulks, and people coming thence to examine the iron,
Joe's opinion was corroborated. They did not undertake to say
when it had left the prison-ships to which it undoubtedly had once
belonged ; but they claimed to know for certain that that particu-
lar manacle had not been worn by either of two convicts who had
escaped last night. Further, one of those two was already re-
taken, and had not freed himself of his iron.

Knowing what I knew, I set up an inference of my own here. I
believed the iron to be my convict's iron — the iron I had seen and
heard him filing at, on the marshes — but my mind did not accuse
him of having put it to its latest use. For, I believed one of two
other persons to have become possessed of it, and to have turned
it to this cruel account. Either Orlick, or the strange man who
had shown me the file.

Now, as to Orlick; he had gone to town exactly as he told us
when we picked him up at the turnpike, he had been seen about
town all the evening, he had been in divers companies in several
public-houses, and he had come back with myself and Mr. Wopsle.
There was nothing against him, save the quarrel; and my sister
had quarreled with him, and with everybody else about her, ten

116 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

thousand times. As to the strange man; if he had come back fof
his two banknotes there could have been no dispute about them,
because my sister was fully prepared to restore them. Besides, there
had been no altercation: the assailant had come in so silently
and suddenly, that she had been felled before she could look
round.

It was horrible to think that I had provided the weapon, how-
ever undesignedly, but I could hardly think otherwise. I suffered
unspeakable trouble while I considered and reconsidered whether
I should at last dissolve that spell of my childhood and tell Joe
all the story. For months afterwards, I every day settled the ques-
tion finally in the negative, and reopened and reargued it next
morning. The contention came, after all, to this; — the secret was
such an old one now, had so grown into me and become a part
of myself, that I could not tear it away. In addition to the dread
that, having led up to so much mischief, it would be now more
likely than ever to alienate Joe from me if he believed it, I had
a further restraining dread that he would not believe it, but would
assert it with the fabulous dogs and veal-cutlets as a monstrous
invention. However, I temporised with myself, of course — for, was
I not wavering between right and wrong, when the thing is always
done? — and resolved to make a full disclosure if I should see any
such new occasion as a new chance of helping in the discovery of
the assailant.

The Constables, and the Bow Street men from London — for,
this happened in the days of the extinct red-waistcoated police
— were about the house for a week or two, and did pretty much
what I have heard and read of like authorities doing in other such
cases. They took up several obviously wrong people, and they ran
their heads very hard against wrong ideas, and persisted in trying
to lit the circumstances to the ideas, instead of trying to extract
ideas from the circumstances. Also, they stood about the door
of the Jolly Bargemen, with knowing and reserved looks that
filled the whole neighbourhood with admiration; and they had a
mysterious manner of taking their drink, that was almost as good
as taking the culprit. But not quite, for they never did it.

Long after these constitutional powers had dispersed, my sister
lay very ill in bed. Her sight was disturbed, so that she saw objects

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 117

multiplied, and grasped at visionary teacups and wine-glasses in-
stead of the realities; her hearing was greatly impaired; her
memory also; and her speech was unintelligible. When, at last,
she came round so far as to be helped downstairs, it was still
necessary to keep my slate always by her, that she might indicate
in writing what she could not indicate in speech. As she was (very
bad handwriting apart) a more than indifferent speller, and as Joe
was a more than indifferent reader, extraordinary complications
arose between them, which I was always called in to solve. The
administration of mutton instead of medicine, the substitution of
Tea for Joe, and the baker for bacon, were among the mildest
of my own mistakes.

However, her temper was greatly improved, and she was patient.
A tremulous uncertainty of the action of all her limbs soon became
a part of her regular state, and afterwards, at intervals of two or
three months, she would often put her hands to her head, and
would then remain for about a week at a time in some gloomy
aberration of mind. We were at a loss to find a suitable attendant
for her, until a circumstance happened conveniently to relieve us.
Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt conquered a confirmed habit of living into
which she had fallen, and Biddy became a part of our establishment.

It may have been about a month after my sister's re-appearance
in the kitchen, when Biddy came to us with a small speckled box
containing the whole of her worldly effects, and became a blessing
to the household. Above all she was a blessing to Joe, for the dear
old fellow was sadly cut up by the constant contemplation of the
wreck of his wife, and had been accustomed, while attending on
her of an evening, to turn to me every now and then and say, with
his blue eyes moistened, 'Such a fine figure of a woman as she
once were, Pip!' Biddy instantly taking the cleverest charge of
her as though she had studied her from infancy, Joe became able
in some sort to appreciate the greater quiet of his life, and to get
down to the Jolly Bargemen now and then for a change that did
him good. It was characteristic of the police people that they had
all more or less suspected poor Joe (though he never knew it), and
that they had to a man concurred in regarding him as one of the
deepest spirits they had ever encountered.

118 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

Biddy's first triumph in her new office, was to solve a difficulty
that had completely vanquished me. I had tried hard at it, but
had made nothing of it. Thus it was:

Again and again and again, my sister had traced upon the slate,
a character that looked like a curious T, and then with the utmost
eagerness had called our attention to it as something she particu-
larly wanted. I had in vain tried everything producible that be-
gan with a T, from tar to toast and tub. At length it had come
into my head that the sign looked like a hammer, and on my
lustily calHng that word in my sister's ear, she had begun to ham-
mer on the table and had expressed a qualified assent. Thereupon,
I had brought in all our hammers, one after another, but without
avail. Then I bethought me of a crutch, the shape being much the
same, and I borrowed one in the village, and displayed it to my
sister with considerable confidence. But she shook her head to
that extent when she was shown it, that we were terrified lest
in her weak and shattered state she should dislocate her neck.

When my sister found that Biddy was very quick to understand
her, this mysterious sign reappeared on the slate. Biddy looked
thoughtfully at it, heard my explanation, looked thoughtfully at my
sister, looked thoughtfully at Joe (who was always represented on
the slate by his initial letter), and ran into the forge, followed
by Joe and me.

'Why, of course!' cried Biddy, with an exultant face. 'Don't
you see? It's himr

Orlick, without a doubt! She had lost his name, and could only
signify him by his hammer. We told him why we wanted him to
come into the kitchen, and he slowly laid down his hammer, wiped
his brow with his arm, took another wipe at it with his apron, and
came slouching out, with a curious loose vagabond bend in the
knees that strongly distinguished him.

I confess that I expected to see my sister denounce him, and that
I was disappointed by the different result. She manifested the
greatest anxiety to be on good terms with him, was evidently
much pleased by his being at length produced, and motioned that
she would have him given something to drink. She watched his
countenance as if she were particularly wishful to be assured that
he took kindly to his reception, she showed every possible desire

GREAT EXPECTATIONS lic^

to conciliate him, and there was an air of humble propitiation m
all she did, such as I have seen pervade the bearing of a child to-
wards a hard master. After that day, a day rarely passed without
her drawing the hammer on her slate, and without Orlick's slouch-
ing in and standing doggedly before her, as if he knew no more
than I did what to make of it.

. CHAPTER XVII

I NOW fell into a regular routine of apprenticeship life, which was
varied, beyond the limits of the village and the marshes, by no
more remarkable circumstance than the arrival of my birthday and
my paying another visit to Miss Havisham. I found Miss Sarah
Pocket still on duty at the gate, I found Miss Havisham just
as I had left her, and she spoke of Estella in the very same way, if
not in the very same words. The interview lasted but a few minutes,
and she gave me a guinea when I was going, and told me to come
again on my next birthday. I may mention at once that this be-
came an annual custom. I tried to decline taking the guinea on
the first occasion, but with no better effect than causing her to
ask me very angrily if I expected more? Then, and after that,
I took it.

So unchanging was the dull old house, the yellow light in the
darkened room, the faded spectre in the chair by the dressing-table
glass, that I felt as if the stopping of the clocks had stopped Time
in that mysterious place, and, while I and everything else outside
ill it grew older, it stood still. Daylight never entered the house,
as to my thoughts and remembrances of it, any more than as to
the actual fact. It bewildered me, and under its influence I con-
tinued at heart to hate my trade and to be ashamed of home.

Imperceptibly I became conscious of a change in Biddy, how-
ever. Her shoes came up at the heel, her hair grew bright and neat,
her hands were always clean. She was not beautiful — she was com-
mon, and could not be like Estella — but she was pleasant and
wholesome and sweet-tempered. She had not been with us more
than a year (I remember her being newly out of mourning at

120 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

the time it struck me), when I observed to myself one evening
that she had curiously thoughtful and attentive eyes; eyes that
were very pretty and very good.

It came of my lifting up my own eyes from a task I was poring
at — writing some passages from a book, to improve myself in two
ways at once by a sort of stratagem — and seeing Biddy observant
of what I was about. I laid down my pen, and Biddy stopped in her
needlework without laying it down.

'Biddy,' said I, 'how do you manage it? Either I am very stupid,
or you are very clever.'

'What is it that I manage? I don't know,' returned Biddy,
smiling.

She managed her whole domestic life, and wonderfully too;
but I did not mean that, though that made what I did mean,
more surprising.

'How do you manage, Biddy,' said I, 'to learn everything that
I learn, and always to keep up with me?' I was beginning to be
rather vain of my knowledge, for I spent my birthday guineas
on it, and set aside the greater part of my pocket-money for
similar investment; though I have no doubt, now, that the little
I knew was extremely dear at the price.

'I might as well ask you,' said Biddy, 'how you manage?'

'No; because when I come in from the forge of a night, any
one can see me turning to at it. But you never turn to at it, Biddy.'

'I suppose I must catch it — like a cough,' said Biddy, quietly;
and went on with her sewing.

Pursuing my ideas as I leaned back in my wooden chair and
looked at Biddy sewing away with her head on one side, I began
to think her rather an extraordinary girl. For, I called to mind
now, that she was equally accomplished in the terms of our trade,
and the names of our different sorts of work, and our various tools.
In short, whatever I knew, Biddy knew. Theoretically, she was
already as good a blacksmith as I, or better.

'You are one of those, Biddy,' said I, 'who make the most of
every chance. You never had a chance before you came here,
and see how improved you are!'

Biddy looked at me for an instant, and went on with her sewing.
'I was your first teacher, though; wasn't I?' said she, as she sewed.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 121

'Biddy I' I exclaimed, in amazement. 'Why, you are crying!'

'No, I am not,' said Biddy, looking up and laughing. 'What put
that in your head?'

What could have put it in my head, but the glistening of a tear
as it dropped on her work? I sat silent, recalling what a drudge
she had been until Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt successfully overcame
that bad habit of living, so highly desirable to be got rid of by,
some people. I recalled the hopeless circumstances by which she
had been surrounded in the miserable little shop and the miserable
little noisy evening school, with that miserable old bundle of
incompetence always to be dragged and shouldered. I reflected
that even in those untoward times there must have been latent
in Biddy what was now developing, for, in my first uneasiness and
discontent I had turned to her for help, as a matter of course.
Biddy sat quietly sewing, shedding no more tears, and while I
looked at her and thought about it all, it occurred to me that
perhaps I had not been sufficiently grateful to Biddy. I might
have been too reserved, and should have patronised her more
(though I did not use that precise word in my meditations), with
my confidence.

'Yes, Biddy,' I observed, when I had done turning it over, 'you
were my first teacher, and that at a time when we little thought
of ever being together like this, in this kitchen.'

'Ah, poor thing!' replied Biddy. It was like her self-forgetful-
ness, to transfer the remark to my sister, and to get up and be
busy about her, making her more comfortable: 'that's sadly true!'

'Well,' said I, 'we must talk together a little more, as we used
to do. And I must consult you a little more, as I used to do. Let
us have a quiet walk on the marshes next Sunday, Biddy, and a
long chat.'

My sister was never left alone now; but Joe more than readily
undertook the care of her on that Sunday afternoon, and Biddy
and I went out together. It was summer-time and lovely weather.
When we had passed the village and the church and the church-
yard, and were out on the marshes, and began to see the sails
of the ships as they sailed on, I began to combine Miss Havisham
and Estella with the prospect, in my usual way. When we came
to the river-side and sat down on the bank, with the water rippling

122 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

at our feet, making it all more quiet than it would have been
without that sound, I resolved that it was a good time and place
for the admission of Biddy into my inner confidence.

'Biddy,' said I, after binding her to secrecy, 'I want to be a
gentleman.'

'Oh, I wouldn't if I was you!' she returned. 'I don't think it
would answer.'

'Biddy,' said I, with some severity, 'I have particular reasons
for wanting to be a gentleman.'

'You know best, Pip; but don't you think you are happier as
you are?'

'Biddy,' I exclaimed, impatiently, 'I am not at all happy as
I am: I am disgusted with my calling and with my life. I have
never taken to either since I was bound. Don't be absurd.'

'Was I absurd?' said Biddy, quietly raising her eyebrows; 'I
am sorry for that; I didn't mean to be. I only want you to do
well, and be comfortable.'

'Well, then, understand once for all that I never shall or can be
comfortable — or anything but miserable — there, Biddy! — unless
I can lead a very different sort of life from the life I lead now.'

'That's a pity!' said Biddy, shaking her head with a sorrowful
air.

Now, I too had so often thought it a pity, that, in the singular
kind of quarrel with myself which I was always carrying on, 1
was half inclined to shed tears of vexation and distress when Biddy
gave utterance to her sentiment and my own. I told her she was
right, and I knew it was much to be regretted, but still it was
not to be helped.

'If I could have settled down,' I said to Biddy, plucking up the
short grass within reach, much as I had once upon a time pulled
my feelings out of my hair and kicked them into the brewery well:
'if I could have settled down and been but half as fond of the
forge as I was when I was little, I know it would have been much
better for me. You and I and Joe would have wanted nothing
then, and Joe and I would perhaps have gone partners when I
was out of my time, and I might even have grown up to keep
company with you, and we might have sat on this very bank on

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 123

a fine Sunday, quite different people; I should have been good
enough for you, shouldn't I, Biddy?'

Biddy sighed as she looked at the ships sailing on, and returned
for answer, 'Yes; I am not over-particular.' It scarcely sounded
flattering, but I knew she meant well.

'Instead of that,' said I, plucking up more grass and chewing
a blade or two, 'see how I am going on. Dissatisfied, and uncom-
fortable, and — what would it signify to me, being coarse and com-
mon, if nobody had told me so!'

Biddy turned her face suddenly towards mine, and looked far
more attentively at me than she had looked at the sailing ships.

'It was neither a very true nor a very polite thing to say,' she
remarked, directing her eyes to the ships again. 'Who said it?'

I was disconcerted, for I had broken away without quite seeing
where I was going to. I was not to be shuffled off, now, however,
and I answered, 'The beautiful young lady at Miss Havisham's,
and she's more beautiful than anybody ever was, and I admire her
dreadfully, and I want to be a gentleman on her account.' Having
made this lunatic confession, I began to throw my torn-up grass
into the river, as if I had some thoughts of following it.

'Do you want to be a gentleman, to spite her or to gain her
over?' Biddy quietly asked me, after a pause.

'I don't know,' I moodily answered.

'Because, if it is to spite her,' Biddy pursued, 'I should think
— but you know best — that might be better and more independ-
ently done by caring nothing for her words. And if it is to gain
her over, I should think — but you know best — she was not worth
gaining over.'

Exactly what I myself had thought, many times. Exactly what
was perfectly manifest to me at the moment. But how could I, a
poor dazed village lad, avoid that wonderful inconsistency into
which the best and wisest of men fall every day?

'It may be all quite true,' said I to Biddy, 'but I admire her
dreadfully.'

In short, I turned over on my face when I came to that, and got
a good grasp on the hair, on each side of my head, and wrenched
it well. All the while knowing the madness of my heart to be

124 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

so very mad and misplaced, that I was quite conscious it would
have served my face right, if I had lifted it up by my hair, and
knocked it against the pebbles as a punishment for belonging
to such an idiot.

Biddy was the wisest of girls, and she tried to reason no more
with me. She put her hand, which was a comfortable hand though
roughened by work, upon my hands, one after another, and gently
took them out of my hair. Then she softly patted my shoulder in
a soothing way, while with my face upon my sleeve I cried a h'ttle
— exactly as I had done in the brewery yard — and felt vaguely
convinced that I was very much ill-used by somebody, or by
everybody; I can't say which.

*I am glad of one thing,' said Biddy, 'and that is, that you have
felt you could give me your confidence, Pip. And I am glad of
another thing, and that is, that of course you know you may depend
upon my keeping it and always so far deserving it. If your first
teacher (dear! such a poor one, and so much in need of being
taught herself!) had been your teacher at the present time, she
thinks she knows what lesson she would set. But it would be a
hard one to learn, and you have got beyond her, and it's of no
use now.' So, with a quiet sigh for me, Biddy rose from the bank,
and said, with a fresh and pleasant change of voice, 'Shall we
walk a little further, or go home?'

'Biddy,' I cried, getting up, putting my arm around her neck,
and g-ving her a kiss, 'I shall always tell you everything.'

'Till you're a gentleman,' said Biddy.

'You know, I never shall be, so that's always. Not that I have
any occasion to tell you anything, for you know everything I
know — as I told you at home the other night.'

'Ah!' said Biddy, quite in a whisper, as she looked away at
the ships. And then repeated, with her former pleasant change;
'shall we walk a little further, or go home?'

I said to Biddy we would walk a little further, and we did so,
and the summer afternoon toned down into the summer evening,
and it was very beautiful. I began to consider whether I was
not more naturally and wholesomely situated, after all, in these
circumstances, than playing beggar my neighbour by candlelight
in the room with the stopped clocks, and being despised by Estella.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 125

I thought it would be very good for me if I could get her out of
my head with all the rest of those remembrances and fancies,
and could go to work determined to relish what I had to do, and
stick to it, and make the best of it. I asked myself the question
whether I did not surely know that if Estella were beside me at
that moment instead of Biddy, she would make me miserable? I
was obliged to admit that I did know it for a certainty, and I said
to myself, Tip, what a fool you are! '

We talked a good deal as we walked, and all that Biddy said
seemed right. Biddy was never insulting, or capricious, or Biddy
to-day and somebody else to-morrow; she would have derived only
pain, and no pleasure, from giving me pain; she would far rather
have wounded her own breast than mine. How could it be, then,
that I did not like her much the better of the two?

'Biddy,' said I, when we were walking homeward, 'I wish you
could put me right.'

'I wish I could!' said Biddy.

'If I could only get myself to fall in love with you — you don't
mind my speaking so openly to such an old acquaintance?'

'Oh dear, not at all!' said Biddy. 'Don't mind me.'

'If I could only get myself to do it, that would be the thing for
me.'

'But you never will, you see,' said Biddy.

It did not appear quite so unlikely to me that evening, as it
would have done if we had discussed it a few hours before. I
therefore observed I was not quite sure of that. But Biddy said
she was, and she said it decisively. In my heart I believed her to
be right; and yet I took it rather ill, too, that she should be so
positive on the point.

When we came near the churchyard, we had to cross an em-
bankment, and get over a stile near a sluice gate. There started
up, from the gate, or from the rushes, or from the ooze (which was
quite in his stagnant way). Old Orlick.

'Halloa!' he growled, Svhere are you two going?'

Where should we be going, but home?'

'Well, then,' said he, 'I'm jiggered if I don't see you home!'

This penalty of being jiggered was a favourite supposititious case
of his. He attached no definite meaning to the word that I am

126 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

aware of, but used it, like his own pretended Christian name, to
affront mankind and convey an idea of something savagely damag-
ing. When I was younger, I had had a general belief that if he had
jiggered me personally, he would have done it with a sharp and
twisted hook.

Biddy was much against his going with us, and said to me in
a whisper, ^Don't let him come; I don't like him.' As I did not
like him either, I took the liberty of saying that we thanked him,
but we didn't want seeing home. He received that piece of infor-
mation with a yell of laughter, and dropped back, but came slouch-
ing after us at a little distance.

Curious to know whether Biddy suspected him of having a
hand in that murderous attack of which my sister had never been
able to give any account, I asked her why she did not like him.

'Oh!' she replied, glancing over her shoulder as he slouched
after us, 'because I — I am afraid he likes me.'

'Did he ever tell you he liked you?' I asked indignantly.

'No,' said Biddy, glancing over her shoulder again, 'he never
told me so; but he dances at me, whenever he can catch my eye.'

However novel and peculiar this testimony of attachment, I did
not doubt the accuracy of the interpretation. I was very hot in-
deed upon Old Orlick's daring to admire her; as hot as if it were
an outrage on myself.

'But it makes no difference to you, you know,' said Biddy,
calmly.

'No, Biddy, it makes no difference to me; only I don't like it;
I don't approve of it.'

'Nor I neither,' said Biddy. 'Though that makes no difference
to you.'

'Exactly,' said I; 'but I must tell you I should have no opinion
of you, Biddy, if he danced at you with your own consent.'

I kept an eye on Orlick after that night, and whenever circum-
stances were favourable to his dancing at Biddy, got before him,
to obscure that demonstration. He had struck root in Joe's es-
tablishment by reason of my sister's sudden fancy for him, or I
should have tried to get him dismissed. He quite understood and
reciprocated my good intentions, as I had reason to know there
after.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 127

And now, because my mind was not confused enough before,
I complicated its confusion fifty thousand-fold, by having states
and seasons when I was clear that Biddy was immeasurably better
than Estella, and that the plain honest working life to which I was
born had nothing in it to be ashamed of, but offered me sufficient
means of self-respect and happiness. At those times, I would decide
conclusively that my disaffection to dear old Joe and the forge
were gone, and that I was growing up in a fair way to be partners
with Joe and to keep company with Biddy — when all in a moment
some confounding remembrance of the Havisham days would fall
upon me, like a destructive missile, and scatter my wits again.
Scattered wits take a long time picking up: and often, before I had
got them well together, they would be dispersed in all directions
by one stray thought, that perhaps after all Miss Havisham was
going to make my fortune when my time was out.

If my time had run out, it would have left me still at the heigh?
of my perplexities, I dare say. It never did run out, howeverj
but was brought to a premature end, as I proceed to relate.

CHAPTER XVIII

It was in the fourth year of my apprenticeship to Joe, and it wav
a Saturday night. There was a group assembled round the fire at
the Three Jolly Bargemen, attentive to Mr. Wopsle as he read the
newspaper aloud. Of that group I was one.

A highly popular murder had been committed, and Mr. Wopsle
was imbrued in blood to the eyebrows. He gloated over every
abhorrent adjective in the description, and identified himself for,'
every witness at the Inquest. He faintly moaned, 'I am done for,'
as the victim, and he barbarously bellowed, Til serve you out,'
as the murderer. He gave the medical testimony, in pointed imi-
tation of our local practitioner; and he piped and shook, as the
aged turnpike-keeper who had heard the blows, to an extent so
very paralytic as to suggest a doubt regarding the mental compet-
ency of that witness. The coroner, in Mr. Wopsle's hands, became
Timon of Athens; the beadle, Coriolanus. He enjoyed himself

128 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

thoroughly, and we all enjoyed ourselves, and were delightfully
comfortable. In this cozy state of mind we came to the verdict
of Wilful Murder.

Then, and not sooner, I became aware of a strange gentleman
leaning over the back of the settle opposite me, looking on. There
was an expression of contempt on his face, and he bit the side of
a great forefinger as he watched the group of faces.

'Well!' said the stranger to Mr. Wopsle, when the reading was
done, 'you have settled it all to your own satisfaction, I have no
doubt?'

Everybody started and looked up, as if it were the murderer.
He looked at everybody coldly and sarcastically.

'Guilty, of course?' said he. 'Out with it. Come!'

'Sir,' returned Mr. Wopsle, 'without having the honour of your
acquaintance, I do say Guilty.' Upon this we all took courage to
unite in a confirmatory murmur.

'I know you do,' said the stranger; 'I knew you would. I told
you so. But now I'll ask you a question. Do you know, or do you
not know, that the law of England supposes every man to be
innocent, until he is proved — proved — to be guilty?'

'Sir,' Mr. Wopsle began to reply, 'as an Englishman myself, I — '

'Come!' said the stranger, biting his forefinger at him. 'Don't
evade the question. Either you know it, or you don't know it.
Which is it to be?'

He stood with his head on one side and himself on one side, in
a bullying interrogative manner, and he threw his forefinger at Mr.
Wopsle — as it were to mark him out — before biting it again.

'Now! ' said he. 'Do you know it, or don't you know it?'

'Certainly I know it,' replied Mr. Wopsle.

'Certainly you know it. Then why didn't you say so at first?
Now, I'll ask you another question'; taking possession of Mr.
Wopsle, as if he had a right to him. 'Do you know that none of
these witnesses have yet been cross-examined?'

Mr. Wopsle was beginning, 'I can only say — ' when the stranger
stopped him.

'What? You won't answer the question, yes or no? Now, I'll
try you again.' Throwing his finger at him again. 'Attend to me.
Are you aware, or are you not aware, that none of these witnesses

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 129

have yet been cross-examined? Come, I only want one word from
you. Yes, or no?'

Mr. Wopsle hesitated, and we all began to conceive rather a
poor opinion of him.

'Come!' said the stranger, 'I'll help you. You don't deserve help,
but I'll help you. Look at that paper you hold in your hand. What
is it?'

'What is it?' repeated Mr. Wopsle, eyeing it much at a loss.

'Is it,' pursued the stranger in his most sarcastic and suspicious
manner, 'the printed paper you have just been reading from?'

'Undoubtedly.'

'Undoubtedly. Now, turn to that paper, and tell me whether it
distinctly states that the prisoner expressly said that his legal ad-
visers instructed him altogether to reserve his defence?'

'I read that just now,' Mr. Wopsle pleaded.

'Never mind what you read just now, sir; I don't ask you what
you read just now. You may read the Lord's prayer backwards,
if you like — and, perhaps, have done it before to-day. Turn to
the paper. No, no, no, my friend; not to the top of the column;
you know better than that; to the bottom, to the bottom.' (We
all began to think Mr. Wopsle full of subterfuge.) 'Well? Have you
found it?'

'Here it is,' said Mr. Wopsle.

'Now, follow that passage with your eye, and tell me whether it
distinctly states that the prisoner expressly said that he was in-
structed by his legal advisers wholly to reserve his defence? Come!
Do you make that of it?'

Mr. Wopsle answered, 'Those are not the exact words.'

'Not the exact words! ' repeated the gentleman, bitterly. 'Is that
the exact substance?'

'Yes,' said Mr. Wopsle.

'Yes,' repeated the stranger, looking round at the rest of the
company with his right hand extended towards the witness, Wopsle.
'And now I ask you what you say to the conscience of that man
who, with that passage before his eyes, can lay his head upon his
pillow after having pronounced a fellow-creature guilty, unheard?'

We all began to suspect that Mr. Wopsle was not the man we
had thought him, and that he was beginning to be found out.

130 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

'And that same man, remember/ pursued the gentleman, throw-
ing his finger at Mr. Wopsle heavily; 'that same man might be
summoned as a juryman upon this very trial, and having thus
deeply committed himself, might return to the bosom of his family
and lay his head upon his pillow, after deliberately swearing that
he would well and truly try the issue joined between Our Sovereign
Lord the King and the prisoner at the bar, and would a true verdict
give according to the evidence, so help him God!'

We were all deeply persuaded that the unfortunate Wopsle had
gone too far, and had better stop in his reckless career while there
was yet time.

The strange gentleman, with an air of authority not to be dis-
puted, and with a manner expressive of knowing something secret
about every one of us that would effectually do for each individual
if he chose to disclose it, left the back of the settle, and came into
the space between the two settles, in front of the fire, where he re-
mained standing: his left hand in his pocket, and he biting the
forefinger of his right.

'From information I have received,' said he, looking round at us
as we all quailed before him, 'I have reason to believe there is a
blacksmith among you, by name Joseph — or Joe — Gargery. Which
is the man?'

'Here is the man,' said Joe.

The strange gentleman beckoned him out of his place, and Joe
went.

'You have an apprentice,' pursued the stranger, 'commonly
known as Pip? Is he here?'

'I am here!' I cried.

The stranger did not recognise me, but I recognised him as the
gentleman I had met on the stairs, on the occasion of my second
visit to Miss Havisham. I had known him the moment I saw him
looking over the settle, and now that I stood confronting him with
his hand upon my shoulder, I checked off again in detail his large
head, his dark complexion, his deep-set eyes, his bushy black
eyebrows, his large watch-chain, his strong black dots of beard
and whisker, and even the smell of scented soap on his great hand.

'I wish to have a private conference with you two,' said he, when

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 131

he had surveyed me at his leisure. 'It will take a little time. Per-
haps we had better go to your place of residence. I prefer not to
anticipate my communication here; you will impart as much or
as little of it as you please to your friends afterwards; I have noth-
ing to do with that.'

Amidst a wondering silence, we three walked out of the Jolly
Bargemen, and in a wondering silence walked home. While going
along the strange gentleman occasionally looked at me, and oc-
casionally bit the side of his finger. iVs we neared home, Joe vaguely
acknowledging the occasion as an impressive and ceremonious one,
went on ahead to open the front door. Our conference was held
in the state parlour, which was feebly lighted by one candle.

It began with the strange gentleman's sitting down at the table,
drawing the candle to him, and looking over some entries in his
pocket-book. He then put up the pocket-book and set the candle
a little aside : after peering round it into the darkness at Joe and me,
to ascertain which was which.

'My name,' he said, 'is Jaggers, and I am a lawyer in London.
I am pretty well known. I have unusual business to transact with
you, and I commence by explaining that it is not of my originating.
If my advice had been asked, I should not have been here. It was
not asked, and you see me here. What I have to do as the confi-
dential agent of another, I do. No less no more.'

Finding that he could not see us very well from where he sat, he
got up, and threw one leg over the back of a chair and leaned
upon it : thus having one foot on the seat of a chair, and one foot
on the ground.

'Now Joseph Gargery, I am the bearer of an offer to relieve you
of this young fellow, your apprentice. You would not object to can-
cel his indentures at his request and for his good? You would want
nothing for so doing?

'Lord forbid that I should want anything for not standing in
Pip's way.' said Joe, staring.

'Lord forbidding is pious, but not to the purpose,' returned Mr.
Jaggers. 'The question is, Would you want anything? Do you want
anything?'

'The answer is,' returned Joe sternly, 'No.'

132 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

I thought Mr. Jaggers glanced at Joe, as if he considered him a
fool for his disinterestedness. But I was too much bewildered be-
tween breathless curiosity and surprise, to be sure of it.

'Very well,' said Mr. Jaggers. 'Recollect the admission you have
made, and don't try to go from it presently.'

Who's a-going to try?' retorted Joe.

^I don't say anybody is. Do you keep a dog?'

^Yes, I do keep a dog.'

'Bear in mind then, that Brag is a good dog, but that Holdfast
is a better. Bear that in mind, will you?' repeated Mr. Jaggers,
shutting his eyes and nodding his head at Joe, as if he were forgiv-
ing him something. 'Now, I return to this young fellow. And the
communication I have got to make is, that he has Great Expecta-
tions.'

Joe and I gasped, and looked at one another.

'I am instructed to communicate to him,' said Mr. Jaggers, throw-
ing his finger at me sideways, 'that he will come into a handsome
property. Further, that it is the desire of the present possessor of
that property, that he be immediately removed from his present
sphere of life and from this place, and be brought up as a gentle-
man— in a word, as a young fellow of great expectations.'

My dream was out; my wild fancy was surpassed by sober
reality; IVIiss Havisham was going to make my fortune on a gray-
scale.

'Now, Mr. Pip,' pursued the lawyer, 'I address the rest of what
I have to say, to you. You are to understand, first, that it ;s the
request of the person from whom I take my instructions^ that
you always bear the name of Pip. You will have no objection, I
dare say, to your great expectations being encumbered with that
easy condition. But if you have any objection, this is the time
to mention it.'

^ly heart was beating so fast, and there was such a singing in
my ears, that I could scarcely stammer I had no objection.

'I should think not! Now you are to understand, secondly, Mr.
Pip, that the name of the person who is your liberal benefactor
remains a profound secret, until the person chooses to reveal it.
I am empowered to mention that it is the intention of the person
to reveal it at first hand by word of mouth to yourself. When or

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 133

where that intention may be carried out, I cannot say; no one can
say. It may be years hence. Now you are distinctly to understand
that you are most positively prohibited from making any inquiry
on this head, or any allusion or reference, however distant, to any
individual whomsoever as the individual, in all the communications
you may have with me. If you have a suspicion in your own breast,
keep that suspicion in your own breast. It is not the least to the
purpose what the reasons of this prohibition are; they may be the
strongest and gravest reasons, or they may be a mere whim. This
is not for you to inquire into. The condition is laid down. Your
acceptance of it, and your observance of it as binding, is the only
remaining condition that I am charged with, by the person from
whom I take my instructions, and for whom / am not otherwise
responsible. That person is the person from whom you derive your
expectations, and the secret is solely held by that person and by
me. Again, not a very difficult condition with which to encumber
such a rise in fortune; but if you have any objection to it, this is
the time to mention it. Speak out.'

Once more, I stammered with difficulty that I had no objection.

'I should think not! Now, Mr. Pip, I have done with stipula-
tions.' Though he called me Mr. Pip, and began rather to make up
to me, he still could not get rid of a certain air of bullying sus-
picion; and even now he occasionally shut his eyes and threw his
finger at me while he spoke, as much as to express that he knew
all kinds of things to my disparagement, if he only chose to mention
them. We come next, to mere details of arrangement. You
must know that although I use the term ''expectations" more than
once, you are not endowed with expectations only. There is already
lodged in my hands, a sum of money amply sufficient for your
suitable education and maintenance. You will please consider me
your guardian. Oh!' for I was going to thank him, 1 tell you at
once, I am paid for my services, or I shouldn't render them. It
is considered that you must be better educated, in accordance with
your altered position, and that you will be alive to the importance
and necessity of at once entering on that advantage.'

I said I had always longed for it.

'Never mind what you have always longed for, Mr. Pip, he

134 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

retorted, 'keep to the record. If you long for it now, that's enough.
Am I answered that you are ready to be placed at once, under
some proper tutor? Is that it?'

I stammered yes, that was it.

'Good. Now, your inclinations are to be consulted. I don't think
that wise, mind, but it's my trust. Have you ever heard of any
tutor whom you would prefer to another?'

I had never heard of any tutor but Biddy, and JMr. Wopsle's
great-aunt; so, I replied in the negative.

There is a certain tutor, of whom I have some knowledge, who
I think might suit the purpose,' said Mr. Jaggers. 'I don't recom-
mend him, observe; because I never recommend anybody. The
gentleman I speak of is one Mr. Matthew Pocket.'

Ah! I caught at the name directly. Miss Havisham's relation.
The Matthew whom Mr. and Mrs. Camilla had spoken of. The
Matthew whose place was to be at Miss Havisham's head, when she
lay dead, in her bride's dress on the bride's table.

'You know the name?' said Mr. Jaggers, looking shrewdly at me,
and then shutting up his eyes while he waited for my answer.

My answer was, that I had heard of the name.

'Oh!' said he. 'You have heard of the name! But the question
is what do you say of it?'

I said, or tried to say, that I was much obliged to him for his
recommendation —

'No, my young friend!' he interrupted, shaking his great head
very slowly. 'Recollect yourself!'

Not recollecting myself, I began again that I was much obliged
to him for his recommendation —

'No, my young friend,' he interrupted, shaking his head and
frowning and smiling both at once; 'no, no, no; it's very well done,
but it won't do ; you are too young to fix me with it. Recommend-
ation is not the word, Mr. Pip. Try another.'

Correcting myself, I said that I was much obliged to him for
his mention of Mr. Matthew Pocket —

'That's more like it!' cried Mr. Jaggers.

— And (I added) I would gladly try that gentleman.

'Good. You had better try him in his own house. The way shall

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 135

be prepared for you, and you can see his son first, who is in Lon-
don. When will you come to London?'

I said (glancing at Joe, who stood looking on, motionless), that
I supposed I could come directly.

'First,' said Mr. Jaggers, ^you should have some new clothes
to come in, and they should not be working clothes. Say this day
week. You'll want some money. Shall I leave you twenty guineas?'

He produced a long purse, with the greatest coolness, and count-
ed them out on the table and pushed them over to me. This was
the first time he had taken his leg from the chair. He sat astride
of the chair when he had pushed the money over, and sat swing-
ing his purse and eyeing Joe.

'Well, Joseph Gargery? You look dumb foundered?'

'I aml^ said Joe, in a very decided manner.

'It was understood that you wanted nothing for yourself, re-
member?'

'It were understood,' said Joe. 'And it are understood. And
it ever will be similar according.'

'But what,' said Mr. Jaggers, swinging his purse, 'what if it
was in my instructions to make you a present, as compensation?'

'As compensation what for?' Joe demanded.

'For the loss of his services.'

Joe laid his hand upon my shoulder with the touch of a woman.
I have often thought him since, like the steam-hammer, that can
crush a man or pat an egg-shell, in his combination of strength
with gentleness. 'Pip is that hearty welcome,' said Joe, 'to go
free with his services, to honour and fortun', as no words can
tell him. But if you think as Money can make compensation to
me for the loss of the little child — what come to the forge — and ever
the best of friends! — '

O dear good Joe, whom I was so ready to leave and so unthank-
ful to, I see you again, with your muscular blacksmith's arm before
your eyes, and your broad chest heaving, and your voice dying
away. O dear good faithful tender Joe, I feel the loving tremble
of your hand upon my arm, as solemnly this day as if it had beer
the rustle of an angel's wing!

But I encouraged Joe at the time. I was lost in the mazes of

136 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

my future fortunes, and could not retrace the bypaths we had trod-
den together. I begged Joe to be comforted, for (as he said) we
had ever been the best of friends, and (as I said) we ever would be
so. Joe scooped his eyes with his disengaged wrist, as if he were
bent on gouging himself, but said not another word.

Mr. Jaggers had looked on at this, as one who recognised in
Joe the village idiot, and in me his keeper. When it v/as over,
he said, weighing in his hand the purse he had ceased to swing:

'Now, Joseph Gargery, I warn you this is your last chance. No
half measures with me. If you mean to take a present that I have
it in charge to make you, speak out, and you shall have it. If on
the contrary you mean to say — ' Here, to his great amazement,
he was stopped by Joe's suddenly working round him with every
demonstration of a fell pugilistic purpose.

'Which I meantersay,' cried Joe, 'that if you come into my place
bull-baiting and badgering me, come out! Which I meantersay as
sech if you're a man, come on! Which I meantersay that what I
say, I meantersay and stand or fall by!'

I drew Joe away, and he immediately became placable: merely
stating to me, in an obliging manner and as a polite expostulatory
notice to any one whom it might happen to concern, that he were
not a-going to be bull-baited and badgered in his own place. Mr.
Jaggers had risen when Joe demonstrated, and had backed near
the door. Without evincing any inclination to come in again, he
there delivered his valedictory remarks. They were these:

'Well, Mr. Pip, I think the sooner you leave here — as you are
to be a gentleman — the better. Let it stand for this day week, and
you shall receive my printed address in the meantime. You can
take a hackney-coach at the stagecoach office in London , and
come straight to me. Understand that I express no opinion, one
way or other, on the trust I undertake. I am paid for undertaking
it, and I do so. Now, understand that finally. Understand that!'

He was throwing his finger at both of us, and I think would have
gone on, but for his seeming to think Joe dangerous, and going off.

Something came into my head which induced me to run after
him as he was going down to the Jolly Bargemen, where he had left
a hired carriage.

'I beg your pardon, Mr. Jaggers.'

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 137

'Halloa!' said he, facing round, 'what's the matter?'

'I wish to be quite right, Mr. Jaggers, and to keep to your direc-
tions; so I thought I had better ask. Would there be any objection
to my taking leave of any one I know, about here, before I go
away?'

'No,' said he, looking as if he hardly understood me.

'I don't mean in the village only, but up-town?'

'No,' said he. 'No objection.'

I thanked him and ran home again, and there I found that Joe

had already locked the front door and vacated the state parlour,

; and was seated by the kitchen fire with a hand on each knee, gazing

intently at the burning coals. I too sat down before the fire and

gazed at the coals, and nothing was said for a long time.

My sister was in her cushioned chair in her corner, and Biddy
sat at her needlework before the fire, and Joe sat next Biddy, an^
I sat next Joe in the corner opposite my sister. The more I looksc
into the glowing coals, the more incapable I ^ecame of looking at
Joe; the longer the silence lasted, the more unable I felt to speak.

At length I got out, 'Joe, have you told Biddy?'

'No, Pip,' returned Joe, still looking at the fire, and holding hi?
knees tight, as if he had private information that they intended to
make off somewhere, 'which I left it to yourself, Pip.'

'I would rather you told, Joe.'

Tip's a gentleman of fortun' then,' said Joe, 'and God bless him
in it!'

Biddy dropped her work, and looked at me. Joe held his knees
and looked at me. I looked at both of them. After a pause they
both heartily congratulated me; but there was a certain touch of
sadness in their congratulations that I rather resented.

I took it upon myself to impress Biddy (and through Biddy,
Joe) with the grave obligation I considered my friends under, to
know nothing and say nothing about the maker of my fortune. It
would all come out in good time, I observed, and in the meanwhile
nothing was to be said, save that I had come into great expectations
from a mysterious patron. Biddy nodded her head thoughtfully
at the fire as she took up her work again, and said she would be
very particular; and Joe, still detaining his knees, said, 'Ay. ay,
I'll be ekervally partickler, Pip' ; and then they congratulated me

138 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

again, and went on to express so much wonder at the notion of my
being a gentleman^ that I didn't half like it.

Infinite pains were then taken by Biddy to convey to my sister
some idea of what had happened. To the best of my belief, those ef-
forts entirely failed. She laughed and nodded her head a great
many times, and even repeated after Biddy, the words Tip' and
Troperty.' But I doubt if they had more meaning in them than an
election cry, and I cannot suggest a darker picture of her state of
mind.

I never could have believed it without experience, but as Joe
and Biddy became more at their cheerful ease again, I became quite
gloomy. Dissatisfied with my fortune, of course I could not be;
but it is possible that I may have been, without quite knowing it,
dissatisfied with myself.

Anyhow, I sat with my elbow on my knee and my face upon my
hand, looking into the fire, as those two talked about my going
away, and about what they should do without me, and all that.
And whenever I caught one of them looking at me, though never
so pleasantly (and they often looked at me — particularly Biddy),
I felt offended: as if they were expressing some mistrust of me.
Though Heaven knows they never did by word or sign.

At those times I would get up and look out at the door; for our
kitchen door opened at once upon the night, and stood open on
summer evenings to air the room. The very stars to which I then
raised my eyes, I am afraid I took to be but poor and humble stars
for glittering on the rustic objects among which I had passed my
life.

'Saturday night,' said I, when we sat at our supper of bread-and-
cheese and beer. 'Five more days, and then the day before the day!
They'll soon go.'

'Yes, Pip,' observed Joe, whose voice sounded hollow in his beer
mug. 'They'll soon go.'

'Soon, soon go,' said Biddy.

'I have been thinking, Joe, that when I go down town on Mon-
day, and order my new clothes, I shall tell the tailor that I'll come
and put them on there, or that I'll have them sent to Mr. Pumble-
chook's. It would be very disagreeable to be stared at by all the
people here.'

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 139

'Mr. and Mrs. Hubble might like to see you in your new gen-
teel figure too, Pip/ said Joe, industriously cutting his bread with
his cheese on it, in the palm of his left hand, and glancing at my un-
tasted supper as if he thought of the time when we used to compare
slices. 'So might Wopsle. And the Jolly Bargemen might take it
as a compliment.'

That's just what I don't want, Joe. They would make such a
business of it — such a coarse, and common business — that I
couldn't bear myself.'

Ah, that indeed, Pip!' said Joe. 'If you couldn't abear your-
self—'

Biddy asked me here, as she sat holding my sister's plate, 'Have
you thought about when you'll show yourself to Mr. Gargery, and
your sister and me? You will show yourself to us, won't you?'

^Biddy,' I returned with some resentment, 'you are so exceed-
ingly quick that it's difficult to keep up with you.'

('She always were quick,' observed Joe.)

'If you had waited another moment, Biddy, you would have
heard me say that I shall bring my clothes here in a bundle one
evening — most likely on the evening before I go away.'

Biddy said no more. Handsomely forgiving her, I soon ex-
; changed an affectionate good-night with her and Joe, and went up
to bed. When I got into my little room, I sat down and took a long
look at it, as a mean little room that I should soon be parted from
and raised above, for ever. It was furnished with fresh young re-
! membrances too, and even at the same moment I fell into much
the same confused division of mind between it and the better rooms
to which I was going, as I had been in so often between the forge
and ]Miss Havisham's, and Biddy and Estella.

The sun had been shining brightly all day on the roof of my attic,
and the room was warm. As I put the window open and stood look-
ing out, I saw Joe come slowly forth at the dark door below, and
take a turn or two in the air; and then I saw Biddy come, and bring
him a pipe and light it for him. He never smoked so late, and it
seemed to hint to me that he wanted comforting, for some reason
or other.

He presently stood at the door immediately beneath me, smoking
his pipe, and Biddy stood there too, quietly talking to him, and I

140 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

knew that they talked of me, for I heard my name mentioned in an
endearing tone by both of them more than once. I would not have
listened for more, if I could have heard more: so, I drew away from
the window, and sat down in my one chair by the bedside, feeling it
very sorrowful and strange that this first night of my bright for-
tunes should be the loneliest I had ever known.

Looking towards the open window I saw light wreaths from Joe's
pipe floating there and I fancied it was like a blessing from Joe —
not obtruded on me or paraded before me, but pervading the air we
shared together. I put my light out, and crept into bed; and it was
an uneasy bed now, and I never slept the old sound sleep in it any
more.

CHAPTER XIX

Morning made a considerable difference in my general prospect
of Life, and brightened it so much that it scarcely seemed the same.
What lay heaviest on my mind, was, the consideration that six days
intervened between me and the day of departure ; for, I could not
divest myself of a misgiving that something might happen to Lon-
don in the meanwhile, and that, when I got there, it might be either
greatly deteriorated or clean gone.

Joe and Biddy were very sympathetic and pleasant when I spoke
of our approaching separation ; but they only referred to it when I
did. After breakfast, Joe brought out my indentures from the
press in the best parlour, and we put them in the fire, and I felt
that I was free. With all the novelty of my emancipation on me,
I went to church with Joe, and thought, perhaps the clergyman
wouldn't have read that about the rich man and the kingdom of
Heaven, if he had known all.

After our early dinner, I strolled out alone, proposing to finish
off the marshes at once, and get them done with. As I passed the
church, I felt (as I had felt during service in the morning) a sub-
lime compassion for the poor creatures who were destined to go
there, Sunday after Sunday, all their lives through, and to lie ob-
scurely at last among the low green mounds. I promised myself
that I would do something for them one of these days, and formed a

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 141

plan in outline for bestowing a dinner of roast-beef and plum-pud-
ding, a pint of ale, and a gallon of condescension, upon everybody
in the village.

If I had often thought before, with something allied to shame,
of my companionship with the fugitive whom I had once seen limp-
ing among those graves, what were my thoughts on this Sunday,
when the place recalled the wretch, ragged and shivering, with his
felon iron and badge! My comfort was, that it happened a long
time ago, and that he had doubtless been transported a long way
off, and that he was dead to me, and might be veritably dead into
the bargain.

No more low wet grounds, no more dykes and sluices, no more of
these gazing cattle — though they seemed, in their dull manner, to
wear a more respectful air now, and to face round, in order that
they might stare as long as possible at the possessor of such great
expectations — farewell, monotonous acquaintances of my child-
hood, henceforth I was for London and greatness: not for smith's
work in general and for you ! I made my exultant way to the old
Battery, and, lying down there to consider the question whether
Miss Havisham intended me for Estella, fell asleep.

When I awoke, I was much surprised to find Joe sitting beside
me smoking his pipe. He greeted me with a cheerful smile on my
opening my eyes, and said:

As being the last time, Pip, I thought I'd foliar.'

And Joe, I am very glad you did so.'

'Thankee, Pip.'

'You may be sure, dear Joe,' I went on, after we had shaken
hands, 'that I shall never forget you.'

'No, no, Pip!' said Joe, in a comfortable tone, 7'm sure of that.
Ay, ay, old chap! Bless you, it were only necessary to get it well
round in a man's mind, to be certain on it. But it took a bit of time
to get it well round, the change come so oncommon plump; didn't
it?'

Somehow, I was not best pleased with Joe's being so mightily
secure of me. I should have liked him to have betrayed emotion,
or to have said, 'It does you credit, Pip,' or something of that sort.
Therefore, I made no remark on Joe's first head: merely saying as
to his second, that the tidings had indeed come suddenly, but that I

142 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

had always wanted to be a gentleman, and had often and often
speculated on what I would do, if I were one.

'Have you though?' said Joe. Astonishing!'

'It's a pity now, Joe,' said I, 'that you did not get on a little more,
when we had our lessons here; isn't it?'

'Well, I don't know,' returned Joe. 'I'm so awful dull. I'm only
master of my own trade. It were always a pity as I was so awful
dull; but it's no more of a pity now, than it was — this day twelve-
month— don't you see"

What I had meant was, that when I came into my property and
was able to do something for Joe, it would have been much more
agreeable if he had been better qualified for a rise in station. He
was so perfectly innocent of my meaning, however, that I thought
I would mention it to Biddy in preference.

So, when we had walked home and had had tea, I took Biddy
into our little garden by the side of the lane, and, after throwing
out in a general way for the elevation of her spirits, that I should
never forget her, said I had a favour to ask of her.

'And it is, Biddy,' said I, 'that you will not omit any opportunity
of helping Joe on, a little.'

'How helping him on?' asked Biddy, with a steady sort of glance.

'Well! Joe is a dear good fellow — in fact, I think he is the dearest
fellow that ever lived — but he is rather backward in some things.
For instance, Biddy, in his learning and his manners.'

Although I was looking at Biddy as I spoke, and although she
opened her eyes very wide when I had spoken, she did not look at
me.

'Oh, his manners! won't his manners do, then?' asked Biddy,
plucking a black-currant leaf.

'My dear Biddy, they do very well here — '

'Oh they do very well here?' interrupted Biddy, looking closely
at the leaf in her hand.

'Hear me out — but if I were to remove Joe into a higher sphere,
as I shall hope to remove him when I fully come into my property,
they would hardly do him justice.'

'And don't you think he knows that?' asked Biddy.

It was such a provoking question (for it had never in the most

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 143

distant manner occurred to me), that I said snappishly, 'Biddy,
what do you mean?'

Biddy having rubbed the leaf to pieces between her hands — and
the smell of a black-currant bush has ever since recalled to me that
evening in the little garden by the side of the lane — said, 'Have you
never considered that he may be proud?'

Troud?' I repeated, with disdainful emphasis.

'Oh! there are many kinds of pride,' said Biddy looking full at
me and shaking her head ; 'pride is not all of one kind — '

'Well? What are you stopping for?' said I.

'Not all of one kind,' resumed Biddy. 'He may be too proud to
let any one take him out of a place that he is competent to fill, and
fills well and with respect. To tell you the truth, I think he is:
though it sounds bold in me to say so, for you must know him far
better than I do.'

'Now, Biddy,' said I, 'I am very sorry to see this in you. I did
not expect to see this in you. You are envious, Biddy, and grudging.
You are dissatisfied on account of my rise in fortune, and you can't
help showing it.'

'If you have the heart to think so,' returned Biddy, 'say so. Say
so over and over again, if you have the heart to think so.'

'If you have the heart to be so, you mean, Biddy,' said I, in a
virtuous and superior tone; 'don't put it off upon me. I am very
sorry to see it, and it's a — it's a bad side of human nature. I did
intend to ask you to use any little opportunities you might have
after I was gone, of improving dear Joe. But after this, I ask you
nothing. I am extremely sorry to see this in you, Biddy,' I repeated.
'It's a — it's a bad side of human nature.'

'Whether you scold me or approve of me,' returned poor Biddy,
'You may equally depend upon my trying to do all that lies in my
power, here, at all times. And whatever opinion you take away of
me, shall make no difference in my remembrance of you. Yet a
gentleman should not be unjust neither,' said Biddy, turning away
her head.

I again warmly repeated that it was a bad side of human nature
(in which sentiment, waiving its application, I have since seen
reason to think I was right), and I walked down the little path

144 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

jway from Biddy, and Biddy went into the house, and I went out
at the garden gate and took a dejected stroll until supper-time;
again feeling it very sorrowful and strange that this, the second
night of my bright fortunes, should be as lonely and unsatisfactory
as the first.

But, morning once more brightened my view, and I extended my
clemency to Biddy, and we dropped the subject. Putting on the
best clothes I had, I went into town as early as I could hope to find
the shops open, and presented myself before Mr. Trabb, the tailor;
who was having his breakfast in the parlour behind his shop, and
who did not think it worth his while to come out to me, but called
me in to him.

'Weill' said Mr. Trabb, in a hail-fellow-well-met kind of way.
'How are you, and what can I do for you?'

Mr. Trabb had sliced his hot roll into three feather beds, and
was slipping butter in between the blankets, and covering it up.
He was a prosperous old bachelor, and his open window looked into
a prosperous little garden and orchard, and there was a prosperous
iron safe let into the wall at the side of his fireplace, and I did not
doubt that heaps of his prosperity were put away in it in bags.

'Mr. Trabb,' said I, 'it's an unpleasant thing to have to mention,
because it looks like boasting; but I have come into a handsome
property.'

A change passed over Mr. Trabb. He forgot the butter in bed,
got up from the bedside, and wiped his fingers on the tablecloth,
exclaiming, 'Lord bless my soul! '

'I am going up to my guardian in London,' said I, casually draw-
ing some guineas out of my pocket and looking at them; 'and I
want a fashionable suit of clothes to go in. I wish to pay for them,'
I added — otherwise I thought he might only pretend to make them
— 'with ready money.'

'My dear sir,' said Mr. Trabb, as he respectfully bent his body,
opened his arms, and took the liberty of touching me on the out-
side of each elbow, 'don't hurt me by mentioning that. ]\Iay I ven-
ture to congratulate you? Would you do me the favour of stepping
into the shop^'

]\Ir. Trabb's boy was the most audacious boy in all that country-
side. When I had entered he was sweeping the shop, and he had

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 145

sweetened his labours by sweeping over me. He was still sweeping
when I came out into the shop with Mr. Trabb, and he knocked
the broom against all possible corners and obstacles, to express
(as I understood it) equality with any blacksmith, alive or dead.

'Hold that noise/ said Mr. Trabb, with the greatest sternness,
*or I'll knock your head off! Do me the favour to be seated, sir.
Now, this,' said Mr. Trabb, taking down a roll of cloth, and tiding
it out in a flowing manner over the counter, preparatory to get-
ting his hand under it to show the gloss, 'is a very sweet article.
I can recommend it for your purpose, sir, because it really is extra
super. But you shall see some others. Give me Number Four, you!'
(To the boy, and with a dreadfully severe stare; foreseeing the
danger of that miscreant's brushing me with it, or making some
other sign of familiarity.)

Mr. Trabb never removed his stern eye from the boy until he
had deposited number four on the counter and was at a safe dis-
tance again. Then, he commanded him to bring number five, and
number eight. And let me have none of your tricks here,' said Mr.
Trabb, 'or you shall repent it, you young scoundrel, the longest
day you have to live.'

Mr. Trabb then bent over number four, and in a sort of
deferential confidence recommended it to me as a light article for
summer wear, an article much in vogue among the nobility and
gentry, an article that it would ever be an honour to him to reflect
upon a distinguished fellow-townsman's (if he might claim me for
a fellow-townsman) having worn. 'Are you bringing numbers five
and eight, you vagabond,' said Mr. Trabb to the boy after that,
*or shall I kick you out of the shop and bring them myself?'

I selected the materials for a suit, with the assistance of Mr.
Trabb's judgment, and re-entered the parlour to be measured.
For, although Mr. Trabb had my measure already, and had
previously been quite contented with it, he said apologetically
that it 'wouldn't do under existing circumstances, sir — wouldn't
do at all.' So, Mr. Trabb measured and calculated me in the
parlour, as if I were an estate and he the finest species of surveyor,
and gave himself such a world of trouble that I felt that no suit
of clothes could possibly remunerate him for his pains. When he
had at last done and had appointed to send the articles to Mr.

146 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

Pumblechook's on the Thursday evening, he said, with his hand
upon the parlour lock, 'I know, sir, that London gentlemen cannot
be expected to patronise local work, as a rule; but if you would
give me a turn now and then in the quality of a townsman, I
should greatly esteem it. Good-morning sir, much obliged. — Door ! '

The last word was flung at the boy, who had not the least
notion what it meant. But I saw him collapse as his master
rubbed me out with his hands, and my first decided experience of
the stupendous power of money, was, that it had morally laid
upon his back, Trabb's boy.

After this memorable event, I went to the hatter's, and the
bootmaker's, and the hosier's, and felt rather like Mother Hub-
bard's dog whose outfit required the services of so many trades.
I also went to the coach-office and took my place for seven
o'clock on Saturday morning. It was not necessary to explain
everywhere that I had come into a handsome property; but
whenever I said anything to that effect, it followed that the
officiating tradesman ceased to have his attention diverted through
the window by the High Street, and concentrated his mind upon
me. When I had ordered everything I wanted, I directed my
steps towards Pumblechook's, and, as I approached that gentle-
man's place of business, I saw him standing at his door.

He was waiting for me with great impatience. He had been
out early with the chaise-cart, and had called at the forge and
heard the news. He had prepared a collation for me in the Barn-
well parlour, and he too ordered his shopman to 'come out of
the gangway' as my sacred person passed.

'My dear friend,' said Mr. Pumblechook, taking me by both
hands, when he and I and the collation were alone, 'I give you
joy of your good fortune. Well deserved, well deserved!'

This was coming to the point, and I thought it a sensible way
of expressing himself.

'To think,' said Mr. Pumblechook, after snorting admiration
at me for some moments, 'that I should have been the humble
instrument of leading up to this, is a proud reward.'

I begged Mr. Pumblechook to remember that nothing was to be
^ver said or hinted, on that point.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 147

'My dear young friend/ said Mr. Pumblechook ; 'if you wilj
allow me to call you so — '

I murmured 'Certainly/ and Mr. Pumblechook took me by
both hands again, and communicated a movement to his waist-
coat, which had an emotional appearance, though it was rather
low down, 'My dear young friend, rely upon my doing my little
all in your absence, by keeping the fact before the mind of
Joseph. — Joseph!' said Mr. Pumblechook, in the way of a compas-
sionate adjuration. 'Joseph!! Joseph!!!' Thereupon he shook
his head and tapped it, expressing his sense of deficiency in
Joseph.

'But my dear young friend,' said Mr. Pumblechook, 'you must
be hungry, you must be exhausted. Be seated. Here is a chicken
had round from the Boar, here is a tongue had round from the
Boar, here's one or two little things had round from the Boar,
that I hope you may not despise. But do I,' said Mr. Pumble-
chook, getting up again the moment after he had sat down, 'see
afore me, him as I ever sported with in his times of happy infancy?
And may I — may I — ?'

This May I, meant might he shake hands? I consented, and
he was fervent, and then sat down again.

'Here is wine,' said Mr. Pumblechook. 'Let us drink, Thanks
to Fortune, and may she ever pick out her favourites with equal
judgment! And yet I cannot,' said Mr. Pumblechook, getting
up again, 'see afore me One — and likewise drink to One — with-
out again expressing — May I? — may I — ?'

I said he might, and he shook hands with me again, and emptied
his glass and turned it upside down. I did the same; and if I had
turned myself upside down before drinking, the wine could not
have gone more direct to my head.

Mr. Pumblechook helped me to the liver wing, and to the best
slice of tongue (none of those out-of-the-way No Thoroughfares
of Pork now), and took, comparatively speaking, no care of
himself at all. 'Ah! poultry, poultry! You little thought,' said
Mr. Pumblechook, apostrophising the fowl in the dish, 'when
you was a young fledgling, what was in store for you. You little
thought you was to be refreshment beneath this humble roof for

148 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

one as — Call it a weakness, if you will,' said Mr. Pumblechookj
getting up again, 'but may I? may I — ?'

It began to be unnecessary to repeat the form of saying he
might, so he did it at once. How he ever did it so often without
wounding himself with my knife, I don't know.

'And your sister,' he resumed, after a little steady eating, 'which
had the honour of bringing you up by hand! It's a sad picter, to
reflect that she's no longer equal to fully understanding the
honour. j\Iay — '

I saw he was about to come at me again, and I stopped him.

'We'll drink her health,' said I.

'Ah!' cried ^Ir. Pumblechook, leaning back in his chair, quite
flaccid with admiration, 'that's the way you know 'em, sir!' (I
don't know who Sir was, but he certainly was not I, and there
was no third person present) ; 'that's the way you know the
noble-minded, sir! Ever forgiving and ever affable. It might,'
said the servile Pumblechook, putting down his untasted glass
in a hurry and getting up again, 'to a common person, have the
appearance of repeating — but may I — ?'

When he had done it, he resumed his seat, and drank to my
sister. 'Let us never be blind,' said Mr. Pumblechook, 'to her
faults of temper, but it is to be hoped she meant well.'

At about this time, I began to observe that he was getting
flushed in the face; as to myself, I felt all face, steeped in wine
and smarting.

I mentioned to IVIr. Pumblechook that I wished to have my new
clothes sent to his house, and he was ecstatic on my so distinguish-
ing him. I mentioned my reason for desiring to avoid observation
in the village, and he lauded it to the skies. There was nobody but
himself, he intimated, worthy of my confidence, and — in short,
might he? Then he asked me tenderly if I remembered our boyish
games at sums, and how we had gone together to have me bound
apprentice, and, in effect, how he had ever been my favourite
fancy and my chosen friend? If I had taken ten times as many
glasses of wine as I had, I should have known that he never had
stood in that relation towards me, and should in my heart of
hearts have repudiated the idea. Yet for all that, I remember

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 149

feeling convinced that I had been much mistaken in him, and that
he was a sensible practical good-hearted prime fellow.

By degrees he fell to reposing such great confidence in me, as
to ask my advice in reference to his own affairs. He mentioned
that there was an opportunity for a great amalgamation and mon-
opoly of the corn and seed trade on those premises, if enlarged,
such as had never occurred before in that, or any other neigh-
bourhood. What alone was wanting to the realisation of a vast
fortune, he considered to be More Capital. Those were the two
little words, more capital. Now it appeared to him (Pumblechook)
that if that capital were got into the business, through a sleeping
partner, sir — which sleeping partner would have nothing to do but
walk in, by self or deputy, whenever he pleased and examine the
books — and walk in twice a year and take his profits away in
his pocket, to the tune of fifty per cent. — it appeared to him
that that might be an opening for a young gentleman of spirit
combined with property, which would be worthy of his attention.
But what did I think? He had great confidence in my opinion, and
what did I think? I gave it as my opinion. 'Wait a bit!' The
united vastness and distinctness of this view so struck him, that
he no longer asked me if he might shake hands with me, but said
he really must — and did.

We drank all the wine, and Mr. Pumblechook pledged himself
over and over again to keep Joseph up to the mark (I don't know
what mark), and to render me efficient and constant service (I
don't know what service). He also made known to me for the
first time in my life, and certainly after having kept his secret
wonderfully well, that he had always said of me. That boy is no
common boy, and mark me, his fortun' will be no common fortun'.'
He said with a tearful smile that it was a singular thing to think
of now, and I said so too. Finally, I went out into the air, with a
dim perception that there was something unwonted in the conduct
of the sunshine, and found that I had slumberously got to the
turnpike without having taken any account of the road.

There, I was roused by Mr. Pumblechook's hailing me. He was
a long way down the sunny street, and was making expressive
gestures for me to stop. I stopped, and he came up breathless.

150 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

'No, my dear friend,' said he, when he had recovered wind for
speech. 'Not if I can help it. This occasion shall not entirely pas.
without that affability on your part. — May I, as an old frienc
and well-wisher? May I?'

We shook hands for the hundredth time at least, and he ordered
a young carter out of my way with the greatest indignation. Then,
he blessed me, and stood waving his hand to me until I had passed
the crook in the road; and then I turned into a field and had a
long nap under a hedge before I pursued my way home.

I had scant luggage to take with me to London, for little of
the little I possessed was adapted to my new station. But, I began
packing that same afternoon, and wildly packed up things that I
knew I should want next morning, in a fiction that there was not
a moment to be lost.

So, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, passed ; and on Friday
morning I went to jNIr. Pumblechook's, to put on my new clothes
and pay my visit to Miss Havisham. Mr. Pumblechook's own
room was given up to me to dress in, and was decorated with clean
towels expressly for the event. My clothes were rather a disap-
pointment, of course. Probably every new and eagerly expected
garment ever put on since clothes came in, fell a trifle short of
the wearer's expectation. But after J had had my new suit on,
some half an hour, and had gone through an immensity of postur-
ing with Mr. Pumblechook's very limited dressing-glass, in the
futile endeavour to see my legs, it seemed to fit me better. It be-
ing market morning at a neighbouring town some ten miles off,
Mr. Pumblechook was not at home. I had not told him exactly
when I meant to leave, and was not likely to shake hands with
him again before departing. This was all as it should be, and I
went out in my new array: fearfully ashamed of having to pass
the shopman, and suspicious after all that I was at a personal
disadvantage, something like Joe's in his Sunday suit.

I went circuitously to Miss Havisham 's by all the back ways,
and rang at the bell constrainedly, on account of the stiff long
fingers of my gloves. Sarah Pocket came to the gate, and posi-
tively reeled back when she saw me so changed; her walnut-shell
countenance likewise, turned from brown to green and yellow.

'You?' said she. 'You? Good gracious! What do you want?'

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 151

'I am going to London, Miss Pocket,' said I, 'and want to say
good-bye to Miss Havisham.'

I was not expected, for she le^t me locked in the yard, while
she went to ask if I were to be admitted. After a very short delay,
she returned and took me up, staring at me all the way.

Miss Havisham was taking exercise in the room with the long
spread table, leaning on her crutch stick. The room was lighted
as of yore, and at the sound of her entrance, she stopped and
turned. She was then just abreast of the rotted bride-cake.

'Don't go, Sarah,' she said. 'Well, Pip?'

'I start for London, Miss Havisham, to-morrow,' I was exceed-
ingly careful what I said, 'and I thought you would kindly not
mind my taking leave of you.'

^This is a gay figure, Pip,' said she, making her crutch stick
play round me as if she, the fairy god-mother who had changed
me, were bestowing the finishing gift.

'I have come into such good fortune since I saw you last, Miss
Havisham,' I murmured. 'And I am so grateful for it, Miss Havi-
sham!'

'Ay, ay!' said she, looking at the discomfited and envious Sarah,
with delight. 'I have seen Mr. Jaggers. / have heard about it
Pip. So you go to-morrow?'

'Yes, Miss Havisham.'

'And you are adopted by a rich person?'

'Yes, Miss Havisham.'

'Not named?'

'No, Miss xlavisham.'

'And Mr. Jaggers is made your guardian?'

'Yes, Miss Havisham.'

She quite gloated on these questions and answers, so keen was
her enjoyment of Sarah Pocket's jealous dismay. 'Well!' she went
on; 'you have a promising career before you. Be good — deserve
it — and abide by Mr. Jaggers's instructions.' She looked at me,
and looked at Sarah, and Sarah's countenance wrung out of her
watchful face a cruel smile. Good-bye, Pip! — ^you will always
keep the name of Pip, you know.'

'Yes, Miss Havisham.'

'Good-bye, Pip!'

152 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

She stretched out her hand, and I went down on my knee and
put it to my lips. I had not considered how I should take leave
of her; it came naturally to me at the moment, to do this. She
looked at Sarah Pocket with triumph in her weird eyes, and so
I left my fairy godmother, with both her hands on her crutch
stick, standing in the midst of the dimly lighted room beside the
rotten bride-cake that was hidden in cobwebs.

Sarah Pocket conducted me down, as if I were a ghost who must
be seen out. She could not get over my appearance, and was in
the last degree confounded. I said, 'Good-bye Miss Pocket'; but
she merely stared, and did not seem collected enough to know that
I had spoken. Clear of the house, I made the best of my way
back to Pumblechook's, took off my new clothes, made them into
a bundle, and went back home in my older dress, carrying it —
to speak the truth — much more at my ease too, though I had the
bundle to carry.

And now, those six days which were to have run out so slowly,
had run out fast and were gone, and to-morrow looked me in the
face more steadily than I could look at it. As the six evenings had
dwindled away to five, to four, to three, to two, I had become
more and more appreciative of the society of Joe and Biddy. On
this last evening, I dressed myself out in my new clothes, for their
delight, and sat in my splendour until bedtime. We had a hot
supper on the occasion, graced by the inevitable roast fowl, and we
had some flip to finish with. We were all very low, and none the
higher for pretending to be in spirits.

I was to leave our village at five in the morning, carrying my
little hand-portmanteau, and I had told Joe that I wished to
walk away all alone. I am afraid — sore afraid — that this purpose
originated in my sense of the contrast there would be between me
and Joe, if we went to the coach together. I had pretended with
myself that there was nothing of this taint in the arrangement;
but when I went up to my little room on this last night, I felt
compelled to admit that it might be done so, and had an impulse
upon me to go down again and entreat Joe to walk with me in
the morning. I did not.

All night there were coaches in my broken sleep, going to wrong
places instead of to London, and having in the traces, now dogs,

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 153

now cats, now pigs, now men — never horses. Fantastic failures of
journeys occupied me until the day dawned and the birds were
singing. Then, I got up and partly dressed, and sat at the window
to take a last look out, and in taking it fell asleep.

Biddy was astir so early to get my breakfast, that, although
I did not sleep at the window an hour, I smelt the smoke of the
kitchen fire when I started up with a terrible idea that it must
be late in the afternoon. But long after that, and long after I
heard the clinking of the teacups and was quite ready, I wanted
the resolution to go downstairs. After all, I remained up there,
repeatedly unlocking and unstrapping my small portmanteau and
locking and strapping it up again, until Biddy called to me that
I was late.

It was a hurried breakfast with no taste in it. I got up from the
meal, saying with a sort of briskness, as if it had only just occurred
to me, 'Well! I suppose I must be off ! ' and then I kissed my sister,
who was laughing, and nodding and shaking in her usual chair,
and kissed Biddy, and threw my arms around Joe's neck. Then
I took up my little portmanteau and walked out. The last I saw
of them was, when I presently heard a scuffle behind me, and look-
ing back, saw Joe throwing an old shoe after me and Biddy throw-
ing another old shoe. I stopped then, to wave my hat, and dear
old Joe waved his strong right arm above his head, crying huskily,
'Hooroar!' and Biddy put her apron to her face.

I walked away at a good pace, thinking it was easier to go than
I had supposed it would be, and reflecting that it would never have
done to have an old shoe thrown after the coach, in sight of all
the High Street. I whistled and made nothing of going. But the
village was very peaceful and quiet, and the light mists were
solemnly rising, as if to show me the world, and I had been so
innocent and little there, and all beyond was so unknown and
great, that in a moment with a strong heave and sob I broke into
tears. It was by the finger-post at the end of the village, and I
laid my hand upon it, and said, 'Good-bye, O my dear, dear
friend!'

Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they
are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts.
I was better after I had cried, than before — more sorry, more

154 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

aware of my own ingratitude, more gentle. If I had cried before,
I should have had Joe with me then.

So subdued I was by those tears, and by their breaking out
again in the course of the quiet walk, that when I was on the
coach, and it was clear of the town, I deliberated with an aching
heart whether I would not get down when we changed horses and
walk back, and have another evening at home, and a better part-
ing. We changed, and I had not made up my mind, and still
reflected for my comfort hat it would be quite practicable to get
down and walk back, when we changed again. And while I was
occupied with those deliberations, I would fancy an exact resem-
blance to Joe in some man coming along the road towards us,
and my heart would beat high. — As if he could possibly be there!

We changed again, and yet again, and it was now too late and
too far to go back, and I went on. And the mists had all solemnly
risen now, and the world lay spread before me.

THIS IS THE END OF THE FIRST STAGE OF PIP'S
EXPECTATIONS.

CHAPTER XX

The journey from our town to the metropolis, was a journey of
about five hours. It was a little past mid-day when the four-horse
stage-coach by which I was a passenger, got into the ravel of
traffic frayed out about the Cross Keys, Wood Street, Cheapside,
London.

We Britons had at that time particularly settled that it was
treasonable to doubt our having and our being the best of every-
thing: otherwise, while I was scared by the immensity of London,
I think I might have had some faint doubts whether it was not
rather ugly, crooked, narrow, and dirty.

Mr. Jaggers had duly sent me his address ; it was Little Britain,
and he had written after it on his card, 'just out of Smithfield,
and close by the coach-office.' Nevertheless, a hackney-coachman,
who seemed to have as many capes to his greasy great-coat as

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 155

he was years old, packed me up in his coach, and hemmed me in
with a folding and jingling barrier of steps, as if he were going
to take me fifty miles. His getting on his box, which I remember
to have been decorated with an old weather-stained pea-green ham-
mer-cloth, moth-eaten into rags, was quite a work of time. It
was a wonderful equipage, with six great coronets outside, and
ragged things behind for I don't know how many footmen to hold
on by, and a harrow below them, to prevent amateur footmen
from yielding to the temptation.

I had scarcely had time to enjoy the coach and to think how
like a straw-yard it was, and yet how like a rag-shop, and to won-
der why the horses' nose-bags were kept inside, when I observed
the coachman, beginning to get down, as if we were going to stop
presently. And stop we presently did, in a gloomy street, at certain
offices with an open door, whereon was painted Mr. Jaggers.

'How much?' I asked the coachman.

The coachman answered, 'A shilling — unless you wish to make
it more.'

I naturally said I had no wish to make it more.

'Then it must be a shilling,' observed the coachman. *I don't
want to get into trouble. I know him!' He darkly closed an eye
at Mr. Jaggers's name, and shook his head.

When he had got his shilling, and had in course of time com-
pleted the ascent to his box, and had got away (which appeared
to relieve his mind), I went into the front office with my little
portmanteau in my hand, and asked, was Mr. Jaggers at home?

'He is not,' returned the clerk. 'He is in Court at present. Am
I addressing Mr. Pip?'

I signified that he was addressing Mr. Pip.

'Mr. Jaggers left word would you wait in his room. He couldn't
say how long he might be, having a case on. But it stands to
reason, his time being valuable, that he won't be longer than he
can help.'

With those words, the clerk opened a door, and ushered me
into an inner chamber at the back. Here we found a gentleman
with one eye, in a velveteen suit and knee-breeches, who wiped
his nose with his sleeve on being interrupted in the perusal of the
newspaper.

156 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

'Go and wait outside, Mike,' said the clerk.

I began to say that I hoped I was not interrupting — when the
clerk shoved this gentleman out with as little ceremony as I ever
saw used, and tossing his fur cap out after him, left me alone.

Mr. Jaggers's room was lighted by a skylight only, and was a
most dismal place; the skylight, eccentrically patched like a brok-
en head, and the distorted adjoining houses looking as if they had
twisted themselves to peep down at me through it. There were
not so many papers about, as I should have expected to see;
and there were some odd objects about, that I should not have
expected to see — such as an old rusty pistol, a sword in a scab-
bard, several strange-looking boxes and packages, and two dread-
ful casts on a shelf, of faces peculiarly swollen, and twitchy about
the nose. Mr. Jaggers's own high-backed chair was of deadly
black horse-hair, with rows of brass nails round it, like a coffin;
and I fancied I could see how he leaned back in it, and bit his
forefinger at the clients. The room was but small, and the clients
seemed to have had a habit of backing up against the wall: the
wall, especially opposite to Mr. Jaggers's chair, being greasy with
shoulders. I recalled too, that the one-eyed gentleman had shuffled
forth against the wall when I was the innocent cause of his being
turned out.

I sat down in the cliental chair placed over against Mr. Jag-
gers's chair, and became fascinated by the dismal atmosphere of
the place. I called to mind that the clerk had the same air of
knowing something to everybody else's disadvantage, as his master
had. I wondered how many other clerks there were upstairs,
and whether they all claimed to have the same detrimental mastery
of their fellow-creatures. I wondered what was the history of all
the odd litter about the room, and how it came there. I wondered
whether the two swollen faces were of Mr. Jaggers's family, and,
if he were so unfortunate as to have had a pair of such ill-looking
relations, why he stuck them on that dusty perch for the blacks
and flies to settle on, instead of giving them a place at home. Of
course I had no experience of a London summer day, and my
spirits may have been oppressed by the hot exhausted air, and
by the dust and grit that lay thick on everything. But I sat
wondering and waiting in Mr. Jaggers's close room, until I really

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 157

could not bear the two casts on the shelf above Mr. Jaggers's
chair, and got up and went out.

When I told the clerk that I would take a turn in the air while
I waited, he advised me to go round the corner and I should come
into Smithfield. So, I came into Smithfield; and the shameful
place, being all asmear with filth and fat and blood and foam,
seemed to stick to me. So I rubbed it off with all possible speed
by turning into a street where I saw the great black dome of
Saint Paul's bulging at me from behind a grim stone building
which a bystander said was Newgate Prison. Following the
wall of the jail, I found the roadway covered with straw to deaden
the noise of passing vehicles; and from this, and from the quantity
of people standing about, smelling strongly of spirits and beer, I
inferred that the trials were on.

While I looked about me here, an exceedingly dirty and partial-
ly drunk minister of justice asked me if I would like to step in
and hear a trial or so: informing me that he could give me a front
place for half-a-crown, whence I should command a full view of
the Lord Chief Justice in his wig and robes — mentioning that
awful personage like waxwork, and presently offering him at the
reduced price of eighteenpence. As I declined the proposal on the
plea of an appointment, he was so good as to take me into a yard
and show me where the gallows was kept, and also where people
were publicly whipped, and then he showed me the Debtors'
Door, out of which culprits came to be hanged; heightening the
interest of that dreadful portal by giving me to understand that
*four on 'em' would come out at that door the day after to-morrow
at eight in the morning to be killed in a row. This was horrible,
and gave me a sickening idea of London: the more so as the Lord
Chief Justice's proprietor wore (from his hat down to his boots
and up again to his pocket-handkerchief inclusive) mildewed
clothes, which had evidently not belonged to him originally, and
which, I took it into my head, he had bought cheap of the execu-
tioner. Under these circumstances I thought myself well rid of
him for a shilling.

I dropped into the office to ask if Mr. Jaggers had come in yet,
and I found he had not, and I strolled out again. This time, I
made the tour of Little Britain, and turned into Bartholomew

158 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

Close; and now I became aware that other people were waiting
about for ]Mr. Jaggers, as well as I. There were two men of
secret appearance lounging in Bartholomew Close, and thought-
fully fitting their feet into the cracks of the pavement as they
talked together, one of whom said to the other when they first
passed me, that 'Jaggers would do it if it was to be done.' There
was a knot of three men and two women standing at a corner, and
one of the women was crying on her dirty shawl, and the other
comforted her by saying, as she pulled her own shawl over her
shoulders, daggers is for him, ']\Ielia, and what more could you
have?' There was a red-eyed little Jew who came into the Close
while I was loitering there, in company with a second little Jew
whom he sent upon an errand ; and while the messenger was gone,
I remarked this Jew, who was of a highly excitable temperament,
performing a jig of anxiety under a lamp-post, and accompanying
himself, in a kind of frenzy, with the words, 'Oh Jaggerth, Jag-
gerth, Jaggerth! all otherth ith Cag-Maggerth, give me Jaggerth!'
These testimonies to the popularity of my guardian made a deep
impression on me, and I admired and wondered more than ever.

At length, as I was looking out at the iron gate of Bartholo-
mew Close into Little Britain, I saw Mr. Jaggers coming across
the road towards me. All the others who were waiting saw him
at the same time, and there was quite a rush at him. Mr. Jaggers,
putting a hand on my shoulder and walking me on at his side
without saying anything to me, addressed himself to his followers.

First, he took the two secret men.

*Now, I have nothing to say to you' said Mr. Jaggers, throwing
his finger at them. 'I want to know no more than I know. As to
the result, it's a toss-up. I told you from the first it was a toss-up.
Have you paid Wemmick?'

'We made the money up this morning, sir,' said one of the
men, submissively, while the other perused Mr. Jaggers's face.

'I don't ask you when you made it up, or where, or whether
you made it up at all. Has Wemmick got it?'

^Yes, sir,' said both the men together.

'Very well; then you may go. Now, I won't have it!' said Mr.
Jaggers, waving his hand at them to put them behind him. 'If you
say one word to me. I'll throw up the case/

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 159

'We thought, Mr. Jaggers — ' one of the men began, pulling off
his hat.

'That's what I told you not to do,' said Mr. Jaggers. ^You
thought! I think for you; that's enough for you. If I want you,
I know where to find you; I don't want you to find me. Now
I won't have it. I won't hear a word.'

The two men looked at one another as Mr. Jaggers waved them
behind again, and humbly fell back and were heard no more.

'And now youf said Mr. Jaggers, suddenly stopping, and
turning on the two women with the shawls, from whom the three
men had meekly separated — 'Oh! Amelia, is it?'

'Yes, Mr. Jaggers.'

'And do you remember,' retorted Mr. Jaggers, 'that but for me
you wouldn't be here and couldn't be here?'

'Oh yes, sir!' exclaimed both women together. 'Lord bless
you, sir, well we knows that! '

'Then why,' said Mr. Jaggers, 'do you come here?'

'My Bill, sir!' the crying woman pleaded.

'Now, I tell you what!' said Mr. Jaggers. 'Once for all. If
you don't know that your Bill's in good hands, I know it. And
if you come here, bothering about your Bill, I'll make an example
of both your Bill and you, and let him slip through my fingers.
Have you paid Wemmick?'

'Oh yes, sir! Every farden.'

'Very well. Then you have done all you have got to do. Say
another word — one single word — and Wemmick shall give you
your money back.'

This terrible threat caused the two women to fall off immedi-
ately. No one remained now but the excitable Jew, who had al
ready raised the skirts of Mr. Jaggers's coat to his lips several
times.

'I don't know this man?' said Mr. Jaggers, in the most devas-
tating strain. 'What does this fellow want?'

'Ma thear Mithter Jaggerth. Hown brother to Habraham
Latharuth?'

'Who's he?' said Mr. Jaggers. 'Let go of my coat.'

The suitor, kissing the hem of the garment again before re-

160 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

linquishing it, replied, 'Habraham Latharuth, on thuthpition of
plate.'

'You're too late,' said Mr. Jaggers. 'I am over the way.'

'Holy father, Mithter JaggerthI' cried my excitable acquaint-
ance, turning white, 'don't thay you're again Habraham Lath-
aruth I'

'I am,' said Mr. Jaggers, 'and there's an end of it. Get out of
the way.'

'Mithter Jaggerth! Half a moment I My hown cuthen'th gone
to Mithter Wemmick at thith prethenth minute to hoffer him
hany termth. Mithter JaggerthI Half a quarter of a moment!
If you'd have the condthenthun to be bought off from the t'other
thide — at any thuperior prithe! — money no object! — Mithter
Jaggerth— :Mithter—! '

My guardian threw his supplicant off with supreme indifference,
and left him dancing on the pavement as if it were red-hot. With-
out further interruption, we reached the front office, where we
found the clerk and the man in velveteen with the fur cap.

'Here's Mike,' said the clerk, getting down from his stool, and
approaching j\Ir. Jaggers confidentially.

'Oh!' said Mr. Jaggers, turning to the man who was pulling a
lock of hair in the middle of his forehead, like the Bull in Cock
Robin pulling at the bell-rope; 'your man comes on this afternoon.
Well?'

'Well, Mas'r Jaggers,' returned Mike, in the voice of a sufferer
from a constitutional cold; 'arter a deal o' trouble, I've found one,
sir, as might do.'

'What is he prepared to swear?'

'Well, Mas'r Jaggers,' said ^like, wiping his nose on his fur cap
this time; 'in a general way, anythink.'

Mr. Jaggers suddenly became most irate. 'Now, I warned you
before,' said he, throwing his forefinger at the terrified client,
'that if ever you presumed to talk in that way here, I'd make an
example of you. You infernal scoundrel, how dare you tell me
that?'

The client looked scared, but bewildered too, as if he were un-
conscious what he had done.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 161

'Spooney!' said the clerk, in a low voice, giving him a stir with
his elbow. 'Soft Head! Need you say it face to face?'

'Now, I ask you, you blundering booby,' said my guardian,
very sternly, 'once more and for the last time, what the man
you have brought here is prepared to swear?'

Mike looked hard at my guardian, as if he were trying to learn
a lesson from his face, and slowly replied, 'Ayther to character,
or to having been in his company and never left him all the night
in question.'

'Now, be careful. In what station of life is this man?'

Mike looked at his cap, and looked at the floor, and looked
at the ceiling, and looked at the clerk, and even looked at me,
before beginning to reply in a nervous manner, 'We've dressed him
up like — ' when my guardian blustered out:

'What? You WILL, will you?'

('Spooney!' added the clerk again, with another stir.)

After some helpless casting about, Mike brightened and be-
gan again:

'He is dressed like a 'spectable pieman. A sort of a pastry-cook.'

'Is he here?' asked my guardian.

'I left him, said Mike, 'a setting on some doorsteps round the
corner.'

'Take him past that window, and let me see him.'

The window indicated, was the office window. We all three
went to it, behind the wire blind, and presently saw the client go
by in an accidental manner, with a murderous-looking tall individ-
ual, in a short suit of white linen and a paper cap. This guileless
confectioner was not by any means sober, and had a black eye in
the green stage of recovery, which was painted over.

'Tell him to take his witness away directly,' said my guardian
to the clerk, in extreme disgust, 'and ask him what he means by
bringing such a fellow as that,'

My guardian then took me into his own room, and while he
lunched standing, from a sandwich-box and a pocket flask of
sherry (he seemed to bully his very sandwich as he ate it), in-
formed me what arrangements he had made for me. I was to go
to 'Barnard's Inn,' to young Mr. Pocket's rooms, where a bed had

162 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

bent sent in for my accommodation ; I was to remain with young
Mr. Pocket until Monday; on Monday I was to go with him to
his father's house on a visit, that I might try how I liked it. Also,
I was told what my allowance was to be — it was a very liberal
one — and had handed to me from one of my guardian's drawers, the
cards of certain trademen with whom I was to deal for all kinds
of clothes, and such other things as I could in reason want. 'You
will find your credit good, Mr. Pip,' said my guardian, whc-se
flask of sherry smelt like a whole cask-full, as he hastily refreshed
himself, 'but I shall by this means be able to check your bills, and
to pull you up if I find you out-running the constable. Of course
you'll go wrong somehow, but that's no fault of mine.'

After I had pondered a little over this encouraging sentiment,
I asked Mr. Jaggers if I could send for a coach? He said it
was not worth while, I was so near my destination; Wemmick
should walk round with me, if I pleased.

I then found that Wemmick was the clerk in the next room.
Another clerk was run down from upstairs to take his place while
he was out, and I accompanied him into the street, after shaking
hands with my guardian. We found a new set of people lingering
outside^ but Wemmick made a way among them by saying coolly
yet decisively, 'I tell you it's no use; he won't have a word to
say to one of you'; and we soon got clear of them, and went on
side by side.

CHAPTER XXI

Casting my eyes on Mr. Wemmick as we went along, to see what
he was like in the light of day, I found him to be a dry man,
rather short in stature, with a square wooden face, whose expres-
sion seemed to have been imperfectly chipped out with a dull-
edged chisel. There were some marks in it that might have been
dimples, if the material had been softer and the instrument finer,
but which, as it was, were only dints. The chisel had made three or
four of these attempts at embellishment over his nose, but had
given them up without an effort to smooth them off. I judged him

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 163

to be a bachelor from the frayed condition of his linen, and he
appeared to have sustained a good many bereavements; for he
wore at least four mourning rings, besides a brooch representing
a lady and a weeping willow at a tomb with an urn on it. I
noticed, too, that several rings and seals hung at his watch-chain
as if he were quite laden with remembrances of departed friends.
He had glittering eyes — small, keen, and black — and thin wide
mottled lips. He had had them, to the best of my belief, from forty
to fifty years.

^So you were never in London before?' said Mr. Wemmick to me.

^No,' said I.

^I was new here once,' said Mr. Wemmick. 'Rum to think of
now!'

'You are well acquainted with it now?'

'Why, yes,' said Mr. Wemmick. 'I know the moves of it.'

'Is it a very wicked place?' I asked, more for the sake of saying
something than for information.

'You may get cheated, robbed, and murdered, in London. But
there are plenty of people anywhere, who'll do that for you.'

'If there is bad blood between you and them,' said I, to soften
it off a little.

'Oh! I don't know about bad blood,' returned Mr. Wemmick.
'There's not much bad blood about. They'll do it, if there's any-
thing to be got by it.'

'That makes it worse.'

'You think so?' returned Mr. Wemmick. 'Much about the
same, I should say.'

He wore his hat on the back of his head, and looked straight
before him: walking in a self-contained way as if there were
nothing in the streets to claim his attention. His mouth was such
a post-office of a mouth that he had a mechanical appearance of
smiling. We had got to the top of Holborn Hill before I knew
that it was merely a mechanical appearance, and that he was not
smiling at all.

'Do you know where Mr. Matthew Pocket lives?' I asked Mr.
Wemmick.

'Yes,' said he, nodding in the direction. 'At Hammersmith, west
of London.'

164 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

'Is that far?'

'Well ! Say five miles.'

'Do you know him?'

'Why, you are a regular cross-examiner!' said Mr. Wemmick,
looking at me with an approving air. 'Yes, I know him. / know
him!'

There was an air of toleration or depreciation about his ut-
terance of these words, that rather depressed me; and I was
still looking sideways at his block of a face in search of any
encouraging note to the text, when he said here we were at Barn-
ard's Inn. My depression was not alleviated by the announce-
ment, for, I had supposed that establishment to be an hotel
kept by Mr. Barnard, to which the Blue Boar in our town was
a mere public-house. Whereas I now found Barnard to be a dis-
embodied spirit, or a fiction, and his inn the dingiest collection
of shabby buildings ever squeezed together in a rank corner as
a club for Tomcats.

We entered this haven through a wicket-gate, and were dis-
gorged by an introductory passage into a melancholy little
square that looked to me like a flat burying-ground. I thought
it had the most dismal trees in it, and the most dismal sparrows,
and the most dismal cats, and the most dismal houses (in number
half a dozen or so), that I had ever seen. I thought the windows
of the sets of chambers into which those houses were divided, were
in every stage of dilapidated blind and curtain, crippled flower-pot,
cracked glass, dusty decay, and miserable makeshift; while To Let
To Let To Let, glared at me from empty rooms, as if no new
wretches ever came there, and the vengeance of the soul of Barn-
ard were being slowly appeased by the gradual suicide of the
present occupants and their unholy interment under the gravel.
A frouzy mourning of soot and smoke attired this forlorn creation
of Barnard, and it had strewed ashes on its head, and was under-
going penance and humiliation as a mere dust-hole. Thus far
my sense of sight; while dry rot and wet rot and all the silent
rots that rot in neglected roof and cellar — rot of rat and mouse
and bug and coaching-stables near at hand besides — addressed
themselves faintly to my sense of smell, and moaned, 'Try
Barnard's Mixture.'

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 165

So imperfect was this realisation of the first of my great ex-
pectations, that I looked in dismay at Mr. Wemmick. Ah!' said
he, mistaking me; 'the retirement reminds you of the country.
So it does me.'

He led me into a corner and conducted me up a flight of stairs —
which appeared to me to be slowly collapsing into sawdust, so that
one of those days the upper lodgers would look out at their
doors and find themselves without the means of coming down —
to a set of chambers on the top floor. Mr. Pocket, Jun., was
painted on the door, and there was a label on the letter-box,
'Return shortly.'

'He hardly thought you'd come so soon,' Mr. Wemmick ex-
plained. 'You don't want me any more?'

'No, thank you,' said I.

'As I keep the cash,' Mr. Wemmick observed, 'we shall most
likely meet pretty often. Good-day.'

'Good-day.'

I put out my hand, and Mr. Wemmick at first looked at it
as if he thought I wanted something. Then he looked at me, and
said, correcting himself,

'To be sure! Yes. You're in the habit of shaking hands?'

I was rather confused, thinking it must be out of the London
fashion, but said yes.

'I have got so out of it!' said Mr. Wemmick — 'except at last.
Very glad, I'm sure, to make your acquaintance. Good-day!'

When we had shaken hands and he was gone, I opened the
staircase window and had nearly beheaded myself, for, the
lines had rotted away, and it came down like a guillotine. Happily
it was so quick that I had not put my head out. After this escape,
I was content to take a foggy view of the Inn through the win-
dow's encrusting dirt, and to stand dolefully looking out, say-
ing to myself that London was decidedly overrated.

Mr. Pocket, Junior's, idea of Shortly was not mine, for I had
nearly maddened myself with looking out for half an hour, and had
written my name with my fingers several times in the dirt of
every pane in the window, before I heard footsteps on the stairs.
Gradually there arose before me the hat, head, neckcloth, waist-
coat, trousers, boots, of a member of society of about my own

166 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

standing. He had a paper-bag under each arm and a pottle of
strawberries in one hand, and was out of breath.

'Mr. Pip?' said he.

'Mr. Pocket?' said I.

'Dear me!' he exclaimed. 'I am extremely sorry; but I knew
there was a coach from your part of the country at midday, and
I thought you would come by that one. The fact is, I have been
out on your account — not that that is any excuse — for I thought,
coming from the country, you might like a little fruit after
dinner, and I went to Covent Garden Market to get it good.'

For a reason that I had, I felt as if my eyes would start out
of my head. I acknowledged his attention incoherently, and be-
gan to think this was a dream.

'Dear me!' said Mr. Pocket, Junior. 'This door sticks so!'

As he was fast making jam of his fruit by wrestling with the
door while the paper-bags were under his arms, I begged him to
allow me to hold them. He relinquished them with an agreeable
smile, and combated with the door as if it were a wild beast. It
yielded so suddenly at last, that he staggered back upon me, and
I staggered back upon the opposite door, and we both laughed
But still I felt as if my eyes must start out of my head, and as
if this must be a dream.

'Pray come in,' said Mr. Pocket, Junior. 'Allow me to lead the
way. I am rather bare here, but I hope you'll be able to make
out tolerably well till ^londay. My father thought you would
get on more agreeably through to-morrow with me than with
him, and might like to take a walk about London. I am sure
I shall be very happy to show London to you. As to our table,
you won't find that bad, I hope, for it will be supplied from our
coffee-house here, and (it is only right I should add) at your ex-
pense, such being Mr. Jaggers's directions. As to our lodging, it's
not by any means splendid, because I have my own bread to
earn, and my father hasn't anything to give me, and I shouldn't
be willing to take it, if he had. This is our sitting-room — just such
chairs and tables and carpet and so forth, you see, as they could
spare from home. You mustn't give me credit for the tablecloth
and spoons and castors, because they come for you from the
coffee-house. This is my little bedroom; rather musty, but Barn-

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 167

ard's is musty. This is your bedroom; the furniture's hired for
the occasion, but I trust it will answer the purpose ; if you should
want anything, I'll go and fetch it. The chambers are retired, and
we shall be alone together, but we shan't fight^ I dare say. But,
dear me, I beg your pardon, you're holding the fruit all this time.
Pray let me take these bags from you. I am quite ashamed.'

As I stood opposite to Mr. Pocket, Junior, delivering him the
bags. One, Two, I saw the starting appearance come into his own
eyes that I knew to be in mine, and he said, falling back:
'Lord bless me, you're the prowling boy!'
'And you,' said I 'are the pale young gentleman!'

CHAPTER XXII

The pale young gentleman and I stood contemplating one another
in Barnard's Inn, until we both burst out laughing. 'The idea of
its being you!' said he. *The idea of its being youf said I. And
then we contemplated one another afresh, and laughed again.
'Well! ' said the pale young gentleman, reaching out his hand good-
humouredly, 'it's all over now, I hope, and it will be magnani-
mous in you if you'll forgive me for having knocked you about so.'

I derived from this speech that Mr. Herbert Pocket (for Herb-
ert was the pale young gentleman's name) still rather confounded
his intention with his execution. But I made a modest reply, and
we shook hands warmly.

'You hadn't come into your good fortune at that time?' said
Herbert Pocket.

'No,' said I.

'No,' he acquiesced: 'I heard it had happened very lately. / was
rather on the look-out for good-fortune then.'

'Indeed?'

'Yes. Miss Havisham had sent for me, to see if she could take
a fancy to me. But she couldn't — at all events, she didn't.' ,

I thought it polite to remark that I was surprised to hear that.

'Bad taste!' said Herbert, laughing, 'but a fact. Yes, she had
sent for me on a trial visit, and if I had come out of it successfully,

168 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

I suppose I should have been provided for; perhaps I should have
been what-you-may-called it to Estella.'

'What's that?' I asked with sudden gravity.

He was arranging his fruit in plates while we talked, which
divided his attention, and was the cause of his having made this
lapse of a word. 'Affianced,' he explained, still busy with the fruit.
'Betrothed. Engaged. What's-his-named. Any word of that sort.'

'How did you bear your disappointment?' I asked.

'Pooh!' said he, 'I didn't care much for it. She's a Tarter.'

'Miss Havisham?'

'I don't say no to that, but I meant Estella. That girl's hard
and haughty and capricious to the last degree, and has been
brought up by Miss Havisham to wreak vengeance on all the male
sex.'

'What relation is she to Miss Havisham?'

'None,' said he. 'Only adopted.'

'Why should she wreak revenge on all the male sex? What re-
venge?'

'Lord, Mr. Pip!' said he. 'Don't you know?'

'No,' said I.

'Dear me! It's quite a story, and shall be saved till dinner-time.
And now let me take the liberty of asking you a question. How
did you come there, that day?'

I told him, and he was attentive until I had finished, and then
burst out laughing again, and asked me if I was sore afterwards?
I didn't ask him if he was, for my conviction on that point was
perfectly established.

'Mr. Jaggers is your guardian, I understand?' he went on.

'Yes.'

'You know he is Miss Havisham's man of business and solicitor,
and has her confidence when nobody else has?'

This was bringing me (I felt) towards dangerous ground. I
answered with a constraint I made no attempt to disguise, that
I had seen Mr. Jaggers in Miss Havisham's house on the very day
of our combat, but never at any other time, and that I believed he
had no recollection of having ever seen me there.

'He was so obliging as to suggest my father for your tutor, and
he called on my father to propose it. Of course he knew about

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 169

my father from his connection with Miss Havisham. My father
is ]\Iiss Havisham's cousin; not that that implies familiar inter-
course between them, for he is a bad courtier and will not propi-
tiate her.'

Herbert Pocket had a frank and easy w^ay with him that was
very taking. I had never seen any one then, and I have never seen
any one since, who more strongly expressed to me, in every look
and tone, a natural incapacity to do anything secret and mean.
There was something wonderfully hopeful about his general air,
and something that at the same time whispered to me he would
never be very successful or rich. I don't know how this was. I be-
came imbued with the notion on that first occasion before we sat
down to dinner, but I cannot define by what means.

He was still a pale young gentleman, and had a certain con-
quered languor about him in the midst of his spirits and briskness,
that did not seem indicative of natural strength. He had not a
handsome face, but it was better than handsome: being extremely
amiable and cheerful. His figure was a little ungainly, as in the
days when my knuckles had taken such liberties with it, but it
looked as if it would always be light and young. Whether Mr.
Trabb's local work would have sat more gracefully on him than
on me, may be a question; but I am conscious that he carried off
his rather old clothes, much better than I carried off my new suit.

As he was so communicative, I felt that reserve on my part
would be a bad return unsuited to our years. I therefore told him
my small story, and laid stress on my being forbidden to inquire
who my benefactor was. I further mentioned that as I had been
brought up a blacksmith in a country place, and knew very little
of the ways of politeness, I would take it as a great kindness in him
if he would give me a hint whenever he saw me at a loss or going
wrong.

'With pleasure,' said he, 'though I venture to prophesy that
you'll want very few hints. I dare say we shall be often together,
and I should like to banish any needless restraint between us. Will
you do me the favour to begin at once to call me by my christian
name, Herbert?'

I thanked him, and said I would. I informed him in exchange
that my christian name was Philip.

170 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

'I don't take to Philip,' said he, smiling, 'for it sounds like a
moral boy out of the spelling-book, who was so lazy that he fell
into a pond, or so fat that he couldn't see out of his eyes, or so
avaricious that he locked up his cake till the mice ate it, or so
determined to go a bird's-nesting that he got himself eaten by
bears who lived handy in the neighbourhood. I tell you what I
should like. We are so harmonious, and you have been a black-
smith— would you mind it?'

'I shouldn't mind anything that you propose,' I answered, 'but
I don't understand you.'

'Would you mind Handel for a familiar name? There's a charm-
ing piece of music by Handel, called the Harmonious Blacksmith.'

'I should like it very much.'

'Then, my dear Handel,' said he, turning round as the door
opened, 'here is the dinner, and I must beg of you to take the top
of the table, because the dinner is of your providing.'

This I would not hear of, so he took the top, and I faced him.
It was a nice little dinner — seemed to me then, a very Lord
Mayor's Feast — and it acquired additional relish from being eaten
under those independent circumstances, with no old people by, and
with London all around us. This again was heightened by a certain
gipsy character that set the banquet off; for, while the table was,
as Mr. Pumblechook might have said, the lap of luxury — being
entirely furnished forth from the coffee-house — the circumjacent
region of sitting-room was of a comparatively pastureless and
shifty character: imposing on the waiter the wandering habits of
putting the covers on the floor (where he fell over them), the
melted butter in the arm-chair, the bread on the bookshelves, the
cheese in the coalscuttle, and the boiled fowl into my bed in the
next room — where I found much of its parsley and butter in a
state of congelation when I retired for the night. All this made the
feast delightful, and when the waiter was not there to watch me,
my pleasure was without alloy.

We had made some progress in the dinner, when I reminded
Herbert of his promise to tell me about Miss Havisham.

'True,' he replied. 'I'll redeem it at once. Let me introduce the
topic, Handel, by mentioning that in London it is not the custom
to put the knife in the mouth — for fear of accidents — and that

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 171

while the fork is reserved for that use, it is not put further in than
necessary. It is scarcely worth mentioning, only it's as well to do
as other people do. Also, the spoon is not generally used over-
hand, but under. This has two advantages. You get at your mouth
better (which after all is the object), and you save a good deal of
the attitude of opening oysters, on the part of the right elbow.'

He offered these friendly suggestions in such a lively way, that
we both laughed and I scarcely blushed.

'Now,' he pursued, 'concerning Miss Havisham. ]Miss Havis-
ham, you must know, was a spoilt child. Her mother died when
she was a baby, and her father denied her nothing. Her father was
a country gentleman down in your part of the world, and was a
brewer. I don't know why it should be a crack thing to be a brew-
er; but it is indisputable that while you cannot possibly be gen-
teel and bake, you may be as genteel as never was and brew. You
see it every day.'

'Yet a gentleman may not keep a public-house; may he?' said I.

'Not on any account,' returned Herbert; 'but a public-house
may keep a gentleman. Well! Mr. Havisham was very rich and
very proud. So was his daughter.'

'i\Iiss Havisham. was an only child?' I hazarded.

'Stop a moment, I am coming to that. No, she was not an only
child; she had a half-brother. Her father privately married again
" — his cook, I rather think.'

'I thought he was proud,' said I.

'My good Handel, so he was. He married his second wife pri-
vately, because he was proud, and in course of time she died.
When she was dead, I apprehend he first told his daughter what he
had done, and then the son became a part of the family, residing
in the house you are acquainted with. As the son grew a young
man, he turned out riotous, extravagant, undutiful — altogether
bad. At last his father disinherited him ; but he softened when he
was dying, and left him well off, though not nearly so well off as
Miss Havisham. — Take another glass of wine, and excuse my men-
tioning that society as a body does not expect one to be so strictly
conscientious in emptying one's glass, as to turn it bottom up-
wards with the rim on one's nose.'

I had been doing this^ in an excess of attention to his recital. I

172 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

thanked him, and apologised. He said, 'Not at all,' and resumed.

'Miss Havisham was now an heiress, and you may suppose was
looked after as a great match. Her half-brother had now ample
means again, but what with debts and what with new madness
wasted them most fearfully again. There were stronger differences
between him and her, than there had been between him and his
father, and it is suspected that he cherished a deep and mortal
grudge against her as having influenced the father's anger. Now,
I come to the cruel part of the story — merely breaking off, my
dear Handel, to remark that a dinner-napkin will not go into a
tumbler.'

Why I was trying to pack mine into my tumbler, I am wholly
unable to say. I only know that I found myself, with a persever-
ance worthy of a much better cause, making the most strenuous
exertions to compress it within those limits. Again I thanked him
and apologised, and again he said in the cheerfullest manner, 'Not
at all, I am sure! ' and resumed.

'There appeared upon the scene — say at the races, or the public
balls, or anywhere else you like — a certain man, who made love to
Miss Havisham. I never saw him (for this happened five-and-
twenty years ago, before you and I were, Handel), but I have
heard my father mention that he was a showy man, and the kind
of a man for the purpose. But that he was not to be, without ig-
norance or prejudice, mistaken for a gentleman, my father most
strongly asseverates; because it is a principle of his that no man
who was not a true gentleman at heart, ever was, since the world
began, a true gentleman in manner. He says, no varnish can hide
the grain of the wood ; and that the more varnish you put on, the
more the grain will express itself. Weill This man pursued Miss
Havisham closely, and professed to be devoted to her. I believe
she had not shown much susceptibility up to that time; but all the
susceptibility she possessed, certainly came out then, and she pas-
sionately loved him. There is no doubt that she perfectly idolised
him. He practised on her affection in that systematic way, that he
got great sums of money from her, and he induced her to buy her
brother out of a share in the brewery (which had been weakly left
him by his father) at an immense price, on the plea that when he
was her husband he must hold and manage it all. Your guardian

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 173

was not at that time in Miss Havisham's councils, and she was
too haughty and too much in love, to be advised by any one. Her
relations were poor and scheming, with the exception of my father;
he was poor enough, but not time-serving or jealous. The only in-
dependent one among them, he warned her that she was doing too
much for this man, and was placing herself too unreservedly in his
power. She took the first opportunity of angrily ordering my fath-
er out of the house, in his presence, and my father has never seen
her since.'

I thought of her having said, 'Matthew will come and see me at
last when I am laid dead upon that table'; and I asked Herbert
whether his father w^as so inveterate against her?

'It's not that,' said he, 'but she charged him, in the presence of
her intended husband, with being disappointed in the hope of
fawning upon her for his own advancement, and, if he were to go
to her now, it would look true — even to him — and even to her. To
return to the man and make an end of him. The marriage day was
fixed, the wedding dresses were bought, the wedding tour was
planned out, the wedding guests were invited. The day came, but
not the bridegroom. He wrote a letter — '

'Which she received,' I struck in, 'when she was dressing for her
marriage? At twenty minutes to nine?'

'At the hour and minute,' said Herbert, nodding, 'at which she
afterwards stopped all the clocks. What was in it, further than
that it most heartlessly broke the marriage off, I can't tell you,
because I don't know. When she recovered from a bad illness that
she had, she laid the whole place waste, as you have seen it, and
she has never since looked upon the light of day.'

'Is that all the story?' I asked, after considering it.

'All I know^ of it; and indeed I only know so much, through
piecing it out for myself; for my father always avoids it, and, even
when Miss Havisham invited me to go there, told me no more of it
than it was absolutely requisite I should understand. But I have
forgotten one thing. It has been supposed that the man to whom
she gave her misplaced confidence, acted throughout in concert
with her half-brother; that it was a conspiracy between them; and
that they shared the profits.'

'I wonder he didn't marry her and get all the property/ said I.

174 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

'He may have been married already, and her cruel mortification
may have been part of her half-brother's scheme/ said Herbert.
'Mind! I don't know that.'

'What became of the two men?' I asked, after again considering
the subject.

'They fell into deeper shame and degradation — if there can be
deeper — and ruin.'

'Are they alive now?'

T don't know.'

'You said just now that Estella was not related to Miss Havis-
ham, but adopted. When adopted?'

Herbert shrugged his shoulders. 'There has always been an Es-
tella, since I have heard of a Miss Havisham. I know no more.
And now, Handel,' said he, finally throwing off the story as it
were, 'there is a perfectly open understanding between us. All I
know about Miss Havisham, you know.'

'And all I know,' I retorted, 'you know.'

'I fully believe it. So there can be no competition or perplexity
between you and me. And as to the condition on which you hold
your advancement in life — namely, that you are not to inquire or
discuss to whom you owe it — you may be very sure that it will
never be encroached upon, or even approached, by me, or by any
one belonging to me.'

In truth, he said this with so much delicacy, that I felt the sub-
ject done with, even though I should be under his father's roof for
years and years to come. Yet he said it with so much meaning,
too, that I felt he as perfectly understood Miss Havisham to be
my benefactress, as I understood the fact myself.

It had not occurred to me before, that he had led up to the
theme for the purpose of clearing it out of our way; but we were
so much the lighter and easier for having broached it, that I now
perceived this to be the case. We were very gay and sociable, and
I asked him, in the course of conversation, what he was? He re-
plied, 'A capitalist — an Insurer of Ships.' I suppose he saw me
glancing about the room in search of some tokens of Shipping, or
capital, for he added, 'In the City.'

I had grand ideas of the wealth and importance of Insurers of
Ships in the City, and I began to think with awe, of having laid a

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 175

young Insurer on his back, blackened his enterprising eye, and cut
his responsible head open. But, again, there came upon me, for my
relief, that odd impression that Herbert Pocket would never be
very successful or rich.

'I shall not rest satisfied with merely employing my capital in
insuring ships. I shall buy up some good Life Assurance shares,
and cut into the Direction. I shall also do a little in the mining
way. None of these things will interfere with my chartering a few
thousand tons on my own account. I think I shall trade,' said he,
leaning back in his chair, 'to the East Indies, for silks, shawls,
spices, dyes, drugs, and precious woods. It's an interesting trade.'

'And the profits are large?' said I.

'Tremendous!' said he.

I wavered again, and began to think here were greater expecta-
tions than my own.

'I think I shall trade, also,' said he, putting his thumbs in his
waistcoat pockets, 'to the West Indies, for sugar, tobacco, and rum.
Also to Ceylon, especially for elephants' tusks.'

'You will want a good many ships,' said I.

'A perfect fleet,' said he.

Quite overpowered by the magnificence of these transactions, I
asked him where the ships he insured mostly traded to at present?

'I haven't begun insuring yet,' he replied. 'I am looking about
me.'

Somehow, that pursuit seemed more in keeping with Barnard's
Inn. I said (in a tone of conviction), 'Ah-h!'

-Yes. I am in a counting-house, and looking about me.'

Ts a counting-house profitable?' I asked.

'To — do you mean to the young fellow who's in it?' he asked in
reply.

'Yes; to you.'

'Why, n-no; not to me.' He said this with the air of one care-
fully reckoning up and striking a balance. 'Not directly profitable.
That is, it doesn't pay me anything, and I have to — keep myself.'

This certainly had not a profitable appearance, and I shook my
head as if I would imply that it would be difficult to lay by much
accumulative capital from such a source of income.

But the thing is,' said Herbert Pocket, 'that you look about you.

176 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

That's the grand thing. You are in a counting-house, you know,
and you look about you.'

It struck me as a singular implication that you couldn't be out
of a counting-house, you know, and look about you; but I silently
fleferred to his experience.

'Then the time comes,' said Herbert, 'when you see your open-
ing. And you go in, and you swoop upon it and you make your
capital, and then there you are! When you have once made your
capital, you have nothing to do but employ it.'

This was very like his way of conducting that encounter in the
garden; very like. His manner of bearing his poverty, too, exact-
ly corresponded to his manner of bearing that defeat. It seemed to
me that he took all blows and buffets now, with just the same air
as he had taken mine then. It was evident that he had nothing
around him but the simplest necessaries, for everything that I re-
marked upon turned out to have been sent in on my account from
the coffee-house or somewhere else.

Yet, having already made his fortune in his own mind, he was
so unassuming with it that I felt quite grateful to him for not be-
ing puffed up. It was a pleasant addition to his naturally pleasant
ways, and we got on famously. In the evening we went out for a
walk in the streets, and went half-price to the Theatre; and next
day we went to church at Westminster Abbey, and in the afternoon
we walked in the Parks; and I wondered who shod all the horses
there, and wished Joe did.

On a moderate computation, it was many months, that Sunday,
since I had left Joe and Biddy. The space interposed between my-
self and them, partook of that expansion, and our marshes were
any distance off. That I could have been at our old church in my
old church-going clothes, on the very last Sunday that ever was,
seemed a combination of impossibilities, geographical and social,
solar and lunar. Yet in the London streets, so crowded with people
and so brilliantly lighted in the dusk of evening, there were de-
pressing hints of reproaches for that I had put the poor old kitchen
at home so far away; and in the dead of night, the footsteps of
some incapable impostor of a porter mooning about Barnard's Inn,
under pretence of watching it, fell hollow on my heart.

Lecturing on Capital

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 177

On the Monday morning at a quarter before nine, Herbert went
to the counting-house to report himself — to look about him, too, I
suppose — and I bore him company. He was to come away in an
hour or two to attend me to Hammersmith, and I was to wait about
for him. It appeared to me that the eggs from which young In-
surers were hatched, were incubated in dust and heat, like the eggs
of ostriches, judging from the places to which those incipient
giants repaired on a Monday morning. Nor did the counting-house
where Herbert assisted, show in my eyes as at all a good Observa-
tory; being a back second floor up a yard, of a grimy presence in
all particulars, and with a look into another back second floor,
rather than a look out.

I waited about until it was noon, and I went upon 'Change, and
I saw fluey men sitting there under the bills about shipping, whom
I took to be great merchants, though I couldn't understand why
they should all be out of spirits. When Herbert came, we went
and had lunch at a celebrated house which I then quite venerated,
but now believe to have been the most abject superstition in Eur-
ope, and where I could not help noticing, even then, that there was
i much more gravy on the tablecloths and knives and waiters'
f clothes, than in the steaks. This collation disposed of at a moder-
ate price (considering the grease, which was not charged for), we
went back to Barnard's Inn and got my little portmanteau, and
then took coach for Hammersmith. We arrived there at two or
three o'clock in the afternoon, and had very little way to walk to
Mr. Pocket's house. Lifting the latch of a gate, we passed direct
into a little garden overlooking the river, where Mr. Pocket's chil-
dren were playing about. And, unless I deceive myself on a point
where my interests or prepossessions are certainly not concerned,
I saw that Mr. and Mrs. Pocket's children were not growing up or
being brought up, but were tumbling up.

Mrs. Pocket was sitting on a garden chair under a tree, read-
ing, with her legs upon another garden chair; and Mrs. Pocket's
two nursemaids were looking about them while the children played.
•Mamma,' said Herbert, 'this is young Mr. Pip.' Upon which Mrs.
Pocket received me with an appearance of amiable dignity.

"Master Alick and Miss Jane,' cried one of the nurses to two of

178 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

the children, 'if you go a-bouncing up against them bushes you'll
fall over into the river and be drownded, and what'll your pa say
then?'

At the same time this nurse picked up Mrs. Pocket s handker-
chief, and said, 'If that don't make six times you've dropped it,
Mum!' Upon which Mrs. Pocket laughed and said, 'Thank you,
Flopson,' and settling herself in one chair only, resumed her book.
Her countenance, immediately assumed a knitted and intent ex-
pression as if she had been reading for a week, but before she could
have read half a dozen lines, she fixed her eyes upon me, and said,
'I hope your mamma is quite well?' This unexpected inquiry put
me into such a difficulty that I began saying in the absurdest way
that if there had been any such person I had no doubt she would
have been quite well and would have been very much obliged and
would have sent her compliments, when the nurse came to my
rescue.

'Well!' she cried, picking up the pocket handkerchief, 'if that
don't make seven times! What are you a-doing of this afternoon,
Mum!' Mrs. Pocket received her property, at first with a look of
unutterable surprise as if she had never seen it before, and then
with a laugh of recognition, and said, 'Thank you, Flopson,' and
forgot me, and went on reading.

I found, now I had leisure to count them, that there were no
fewer than six little Pockets present, in various stages of tumbling
up. I had scarcely arrived at the total when a seventh was heard,
as in the region of air, wailing dolefully.

'If there ain't Baby!' said Flopson, appearing to think it most
surprising. 'Make haste up, Millers!'

Millers, who was the other nurse, retired into the house, and by
degrees the child's wailing was hushed and stopped, as if it were a
young ventriloquist with something in its mouth. Mrs. Pocket read
all the time, and I was curious to know what the book could be.

W^e were waiting, I suppose, for Mr. Pocket to come out to us;
at any rate we waited there, and so I had an opportunity of ob-
serving the remarkable family phenomenon that whenever any of
the children strayed near Mrs. Pocket in their play, they always
tripped themselves up and tumbled over her — always very much

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 179

to her momentary astonishment, and their own more enduring
lamentation. I was at a loss to account for this surprising circum-
stance, and could not help giving my mind to speculations about
it, until by and by Millers came down with the baby, which baby
was handed to Flopson, which Flopson was handing it to Mrs.
Pocket, when she too went fairly head foremost over Mrs. Pocket,
baby and all, and was caught by Herbert and myself.

^Gracious me, Flopson!' said Mrs. Pocket, looking off her book
for a moment, 'everybody's tumbling!'

'Gracious you, indeed. Mum!' returned Flopson, very red in the
face; 'what have you got there?'

7 got here, Flopson?' asked Mrs. Pocket.

'Why, if it ain't your footstool ! ' cried Flopson. 'And if you keep
it under your skirts like that, who's to help tumbling? Here I
Take the baby. Mum, and give me your book.'

Mrs. Pocket acted on the advice, and inexpertly danced the in-
fant a little in her lap, while the other children played about it.
This had lasted but a very short time, when Mrs. Pocket issued
summary orders that they were all to be taken into the house for a
nap. Thus I made the second discovery on that first occasion, that
the nurture of the little Pockets consisted of alternately tumbling
up and lying down.

Under these circumstances, when Flopson and Millers had got
the children into the house, like a little flock of sheep, and Mr.
Pocket came out of it to make my acquaintance, I was not much
surprised to find that Mr. Pocket was a gentleman with a rather
perplexed expression of face, and with his very grey hair disor-
dered on his head, as if he didn't quite see his way to putting any-
thing straight.

CHAPTER XXIII

Mr. Pocket said he was glad to see me, and he hoped I was not
sorry to see him. 'For, I really am not,' he added, with his son's
smile, 'an alarming personage.' He was a young-looking man, in
spite of his perplexities and his very grey hair, and his manner

180 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

seemed quite natural. I use the word natural, in the sense of its
being unaffected; there was something comic in his distraught
way, as though it would have been downright ludicrous but for his
own perception that it was very near being so. When he had talked
with me a little, he said to Mrs. Pocket, with a rather anxious con-
traction of his eyebrows, which were black and handsome, 'Belin-
da, I hope you have welcomed Mr. Pip?' And she looked up from
her book, and said, 'Yes.' She then smiled upon me in an absent
state of mind, and asked me if I liked the taste of orange-flower
water? As the question had no bearing, near or remote, on any
foregone or subsequent transaction, I considered it to have been
thrown out, like her previous approaches, in general conversational
condescension.

I found out within a few hours, and may mention at once, that
Mrs. Pocket was the only daughter of a certain quite accidental
deceased Knight, who had invented for himself a conviction that
his deceased father would have been made a Baronet but for some-
body's determined opposition arising out of entirely personal mo-
tives— I forget whose, if I ever knew — the Sovereign's, the Prime
Minister's, the Lord Chancellor's, the Archbishop of Canterbury's,
anybody's — and had tacked himself on to the nobles of the earth
in right of this quite supposititious fact. I believe he had been
knighted himself for storming the English grammar at the point
of the pen, in a desperate address engrossed on vellum, on the oc-
casion of the laying of the first stone of some building or other, and
for handing some Royal Personage either the trowel or the mortar.
Be that as it may, he had directed Mrs. Pocket to be brought up
from her cradle as one who in the nature of things must marry a
title, and who was to be guarded from the acquisition of plebeian
domestic knowledge.

So successful a watch and ward had been established over the
young lady by this judicious parent, that she had grown up high-
ly ornamental, but perfectly helpless and useless. With her char-
acter thus happily formed, in the first bloom of her youth she had
encountered Mr. Pocket: who was also in the first bloom of youth,
and not quite decided whether to mount to the Woolsack, or to
roof himself in with a mitre. As his doing the one or the other was

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 181

a mere question of time, he and Mrs. Pocket had taken Time by
the forelock (when, to judge from its length, it would seem to have
wanted cutting), and had married without the knowledge of the
judicious parent. The judicious parent^ having nothing to bestow
or withhold but his blessing, had handsomely settled that dower
upon them after a short struggle, and had informed Mr. Pocket
that his wife was 'a treasure for a Prince.' Mr. Pocket had in-
vested the Prince's treasure in the ways of the world ever since,
and it was supposed to have brought him in but indifferent in-
terest. Still, Mrs. Pocket was in general the object of a queer sort
of respectful pity, oecause she had not married a title; while Mr.
Pocket was the object of a queer sort of forgiving reproach, be-
cause he had never got one.

Mr. Pocket took me into the house and showed me my room;
which was a pleasant one, and so furnished as that I could use it
with comfort for my own private sitting-room. He then knocked
at the doors of two other similar rooms, and introduced me to their
occupants, by name Drummle and Startop. Drummle, an old-
looking young man of a heavy order of architecture, was whistling.
Startop, younger in years and appearance; was reading and holding
his head, as if he thought himself in danger of exploding it with
too strong a charge of knowledge.

Both Mr. and Mrs. Pocket had such a noticeable air of being in
somebody else's hands, that I wondered who really was in posses-
sion of the house and let them live there, until I found this un-
known power to be the servants. It was a smooth way of going
on, perhaps, in respect of saving trouble; but it had the appearance
of being expensive, for the servants felt it a duty they owed to
themselves to be nice in their eating and drinking, and to keep a
deal of company downstairs. They allowed a very liberal table to
Mr. and Mrs. Pocket, yet it always appeared to me that by far the
best part of the house to have boarded in, would have been the
kitchen — always supposing the boarder capable of self-defence,
for, before I had been there a week, a neighbouring lady with
whom the family were personally unacquainted, wrote in to say
that she had seen Millers slapping the baby. This greatly dis-
tressed Mrs. Pocket, who burst into tears on receiving the note,

182 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

and said that it was an extraordinary thing that the neighbours
couldn't mind their own business.

By degrees I learnt, and chiefly from Herbert, that Mr. Pocket
had been educated at Harrow and at Cambridge, where he had
distinguished himself; but that when he had had the happiness of
marrying Mrs. Pocket very early in life, he had impaired his pros-
pects and taken up the calling of a Grinder. After grinding a num-
ber of dull blades — of whom it was remarkable that their fathers,
when influential, were always going to help him to preferment, but
always forgot to do it when the blades had left the Grindstone —
he had wearied of that poor work and had come to London. Here,
after gradually failing in loftier hopes, he had 'read' with divers
who had lacked opportunities or neglected them, and had refur-
bished divers others for special occasions, and had turned his ac-
quirements to the account of literary compilation and correction,
and on such means, added to some very moderate private re-
sources, still maintained the house I saw.

Mr. and Mrs. Pocket had a toady neighbour; a widow lady of
that highly sympathetic nature that she agreed with everybody,
blessed everybody, and shed smiles and tears on everybody, ac-
cording to circumstances. This lady's name was Mrs. Coiler, and
I had the honour of taking her down to dinner on the day of my
installation. She gave me to understand on the stairs, that it was a
blow to dear Mrs. Pocket that dear Mr. Pocket should be under
the necessity of receiving gentlemen to read with him. That did
not extend to me, she told me in a gush of love and confidence (at
that time, I had known her something less than five minutes) ; if
they were all like Me, it would be quite another thing.

'But dear Mrs. Pocket,' said Mrs. Coiler, 'after her early disap-
pointment (not that dear Mr. Pocket was to blame in that), re-
quires so much luxury and elegance '

'Yes, ma'am,' I said, to stop her, for I was afraid she was going
to cry.

'And she is of so aristocratic a disposition '

*Yes, ma'am,' I said again, with the same object as before.

' — that it is hard,' said Mrs. Coiler, 'to have dear Mr. Pocket's
time and attention diverted from dear Mrs. Pocket.'

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 183

I could not help thinking that it might be harder if the butcher's
time and attention were diverted from dear Mrs. Pocket; but I
said nothing, and indeed had enough to do in keeping a bashful
watch upon my company-manners.

It came to my knowledge, through what passed between Mrs.
Pocket and Drummle, while I was attentive to my knife and fork,
spoon, glasses, and other instruments of self-destruction, that
Drummle, whose christian name was Bentley, was actually the
next heir but one to a baronetcy. It further appeared that the book
I had seen Mrs. Pocket reading in the garden, was all about titles,
and that she knew the exact date at which her grandpapa would
have come into the book, if he ever had come at all. Drummle
didn't say much, but in his limited way (he struck me as a sulky
kind of fellow) he spoke as one of the elect, and recognised Mrs.
Pocket as a woman and a sister. No one but themselves and Mrs.
Coiler the toady neighbour showed any interest in this part of the
conversation, and it appeared to me that it was painful to Her-
bert; but it promised to last a long time, when the page came in
with the announcement of a domestic affliction. It was, in effect,
that the cook had mislaid the beef. To my unutterable amazement,
I now, for the first time, saw Mr. Pocket relieve his mind by going
I through a performance that struck me as very extraordinary, but
which made no impression on anybody else, and with which I soon
became as familiar as the rest. He laid down the carving-knife and
fork — being engaged in carving at the moment — put his two hands
into his disturbed hair, and appeared to make an extraordinary
effort to lift himself up by it. When he had done this, and had not
lifted himself up at all, he quietly went on with what he was about.

Mrs. Coiler then changed the subject and began to flatter me.
I liked it for a few minutes, but she flattered me so very grossly
that the pleasure was soon over. She had a serpentine way of com-
ing close at me when she pretended to be vitally interested in the
friends and localities I had left, which was altogether snaky and
f ork-tongued ; and when she made an occasional bounce upon
Start op (who said very little to her), or upon Drummle (who said
less), I rather envied them for being on the opposite side of the
table.

184 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

After dinner the children were introduced, and Mrs. Coiler made
admiring comments on their eyes, noses, and legs — a sagacious way
of improving their minds. There were four little girls, and two
little boys, besides the baby who might have been either, and the
baby's next successor who was as yet neither. They were brought
in by Flopson and Millers, much as though those two non-com-
missioned officers had been recruiting somewhere for children and
had enlisted these: while Mrs. Pocket looked at the young Nobles
that ought to have been, as if she rather thought she had had the
pleasure of inspecting them before, but didn't quite know what to
make of them.

'Here! Give me your fork, Mum, and take the baby,' said Flop-
son. 'Don't take it that way, or you'll get its head under the table.'

Thus advised, Mrs. Pocket took it the other way, and got its
head upon the table; which was announced to all present by a
prodigious concussion.

'Dear, dear! give it me back. Mum,' said Flopson; 'and Miss
Jane, come and dance the baby, do!'

One of the little girls, a mere mite who seemed to have prema-
turely taken upon herself some charge of the others, stepped out of
her place by me, and danced to and from the baby until it left off
crying, and laughed. Then all the children laughed, and Mr.
Pocket (who in the meantime had twice endeavoured to lift him*
self up by the hair) laughed, and we all laughed and were glad.

Flopson, by dint of doubling the baby at the joints like a Dutch
doll then got it safely into Mrs. Pocket's lap, and gave it the nut-
crackers to play with: at the same time recommending Mrs. Pock-
et to take notice that the handles of that instrument were not likely
to agree with its eyes; and sharply charging Miss Jane to look
after the same. Then, the two nurses left the room, and had a live-
ly scuffle on the staircase with a dissipated page who had waited at
dinner, and who had clearly lost half his buttons at the gaming-
table.

I was made very uneasy in my mind by Mrs. Pocket's falling
into a discussion with Drummle respecting two baronetcies while
she ate a sliced orange steeped in sugar and wine, and forgetting

ii

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 185

all about the baby on her lap: who did most appalling things with
the nutcrackers. At length little Jane perceived its young brains to
be imperilled, softly left her place, and with many small artifices
coaxed the dangerous weapon away. Mrs. Pocket finishing her
orange at about the same time, and not approving of this, said to
Jane:

'You naughty child, how dare you? Go and sit down this
instant ! '

'Mamma, dear,' lisped the little girl, 'baby ood have put hith
eyeth out.'

'How dare you tell me so!' retorted Mrs. Pocket. 'Go and sit
down in your chair this moment!'

Mrs. Pocket's dignity was so crushing, that I felt quite abashed:
as if 1 myself had done something to rouse it.

'Belinda,' remonstrated Mr. Pocket, from the other end of the
table, 'how can you be so unreasonable? Jane only interfered for
the protection of baby.'

'I will not allow anybody to interfere,' said Mrs. Pocket. 'I am
surprised, Matthew, that you should expose me to the affront of
interference.'

'Good God!' cried Mr. Pocket, in an outburst of desolate des-
peration. 'Are infants to be nutcracked into their tombs, and is
nobody to save them?'

'I will not be interfered with by Jane,' said Mrs. Pocket, with a
majestic glance at that innocent little offender. 'I hope I know my
poor grandpapa's position. Jane, indeed!'

Mr. Pocket got his hands in his hair again, and this time really
did lift himself some inches out of his chair. 'Hear this!' he help-
lessly exclaimed to the elements. 'Babies are to be nutcracked
dead, for people's poor grandpapa's positions!' Then he let him-
self down again, and became silent.

We all looked awkwardly at the table-cloth whilst this was going
on. A pause succeeded, during which the honest and irrepressible
baby made a series of leaps and crows at little Jane, who appeared
to me to be the only member of the family (irrespective of the ser-
vants) with whom it had any decided acquaintance.

186 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

'Mr. Drummle,' said Mrs. Pocket, 'will you ring for Flopson?
Jane, you undutiful little thing, go and lie down. Now, baby dar-
ling, come with ma!'

The baby was the soul of honour, and protested with all its
might. It doubled itself up the wrong way over Mrs. Pocket's
arm, exhibited a pair of knitted shoes and dimpled ankles to the
company in lieu of its soft face, and was carried out in the highest
state of mutiny. And it gained its point after all, for I saw it
through the window within a few minutes, being nursed by little
Jane.

It happened that the other five children were left behind at the
dinner-table, through Flopson 's having some private engagement,
and their not being anybody else's business. I thus became aware
of the mutual relations between them and Mr. Pocket, which were
exemplified in the following manner. Mr. Pocket, with the normal
perplexity of his face heightened, and his hair rumpled, looked at
them for some minutes, as if he couldn't make out how they came
to be boarding and lodging in that establishment, and why they
hadn't been billeted by Nature on somebody else. Then, in a dis-
tant, Missionary way he asked them certain questions — as why
little Joe had that hole in his frill: who said. Pa, Flopson was going
to mend it when she had time — and how little Fanny came by that
whitlow: who said. Pa, Millers was going to poultice it when she
didn't forget. Then he melted into parental tenderness, and gave
them a shilling apiece and told them to go and play; and then as
they went out with one very strong effort to lift himself by the hair
he dismissed the hopeless subject.

In the evening there was rowing on the river. As Drummle and
Startop had each a boat, I resolved to set up mine, and to cut them
both out. I was pretty good at most exercises in which country-
boys are adepts, but, as I was conscious of wanting elegance of
style for the Thames — not to say for other waters — I at once en-
gaged to place myself under the tuition of the winner of a prize-
wherry who plied at our stairs, and to whom I was introduced by
my new allies. This practical authority confused me very much,
by saying I had the arm of a blacksmith. If he could have known

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 187

how nearly the compliment had lost him his pupil, I doubt if he
would have paid it.

There was a supper-tray after we got home at night and I think
we should all have enjoyed ourselves, but for a rather disagreeable
domestic occurrence. Mr. Pocket was in good spirits, when a
housemaid came in, and said, 'If you please, sir, I should wish to
speak to you.'

'Speak to your master?' said Mrs. Pocket, whose dignity was
aroused again. 'How can you think of such a thing? Go and speak
to Flopson. Or speak to me — at some other time.'

'Begging your pardon, ma'am,' returned the housemaid, 'I
should wish to speak at once, and to speak to master.'

Hereupon Mr. Pocket went out of the room, and we made the
best of ourselves until he came back.

'This is a pretty thing, Belinda I ' said Mr. Pocket, returning with
a countenance expressive of grief and despair. 'Here's the cook
lying insensibly drunk on the kitchen floor, with a large bundle of
fresh butter made up in the cupboard ready to sell for grease!'

Mrs. Pocket instantly showed much amiable emotion, and said,
'This is that odious Sophia's doing I '

'What do you mean, Belinda?' demanded Mr. Pocket.

'Sophia has told you,' said Mrs. Pocket. 'Did I not see her, with
my own eyes, and hear her with my own ears, come into the room
just now and ask to speak to you?'

'But has she not taken me downstairs, Belinda,' returned Mr.
Pocket, 'and shown me the woman, and the bundle too?'

'And do you defend her, Matthew,' said ]Mrs. Pocket, 'for mak-
ing mischief?'

Mr. Pocket uttered a dismal groan.

'Am I, grandpapa's granddaughter, to be nothing in the house?'
said Mrs. Pocket. 'Besides, the cook has always been a very nice
respectful woman, and said in the most natural manner when she
came to look after the situation, that she felt I was born to be a
Duchess.'

There was a sofa where ]Mr. Pocket stood, and he dropped upon
it in the attitude of a Dying Gladiator. Still in that attitude he

188 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

said, with a hollow voice, 'Good-night, Mr. Pip/ when I deemed it
advisable to go to bed and leave him.

CHAPTER XXIV

After two or three days, when I had established myself in my
room and had gone backwards and forwards to London several
times, and had ordered all I wanted of my tradesmen, Mr. Pocket
and I had a long talk together. He knew more of my intended
career than I knew myself, for he referred to his having been told
by Mr. Jaggers that I was not designed for any profession, and
that I should be well enough educated for my destiny if I could
'hold my own' with the average of young men in prosperous cir-
cumstances. I acquiesced, of course, knowing nothing to the
contrary.

He advised my attending certain places in London, for the ac-
quisition of such mere rudiments as I wanted, and my investing
him with the function of explainer and director of all my studies.
He hoped that with intelligent assistance I should meet with little
to discourage me, and should soon be able to dispense with any aid
but his. Through his way of saying this, and much more to similar
purpose, he placed himself on confidential terms with me in an
admirable manner: and I may state at once that he was always so
zealous and honourable in fulfilling his compact with me, that he
made me zealous and honourable in fulfilling mine with him. If he
had shown indifference as a master, I have no doubt I should have
returned the compliment as a pupil; he gave me no such excuse,
and each of us did the other justice. Nor, did I ever regard him as
having anything ludicrous about him — or anything but what was
serious, honest, and good — in his tutor communication with me.

When these points were settled, and so far carried out as that I
had begun to work in earnest, it occurred to me that if I could re-
tain my bedroom in Barnard's Inn, my life would be agreeably
varied, while my manners would be none the worse for Herbert's
society. Mr. Pocket did not object to this arrangement, but urged

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 189

that before any step could possibly be taken in it, it must be sub-
mitted to my guardian. I felt that his delicacy arose out of the
consideration that the plan would save Herbert some expense, so
I went off to Little Britain and imparted my wish to Mr. Jaggers.

'If I could buy the furniture now hired for me,' said I, 'and one
or two other little things, I should be quite at home there.'

'Go it!' said Mr. Jaggers, with a short laugh. 'I told you you'd
get on. Well! How much do you want?'

I said I didn't know how much.

'Come!' retorted Mr. Jaggers. 'How much? Fifty pounds?'

'Oh, not nearly so much.'

'Five pounds?' said Mr. Jaggers.

This was such a great fall, that I said in discomfiture, 'Oh ! more
than that.'

'More than that, eh!' retorted Mr. Jaggers, lying in wait for me,
with his hands in his pockets, his head on one side, and his eyes on
the wall behind me; 'how much more?'

'It is so difficult to fix a sum,' said I, hesitating.

'Come!' said Mr. Jaggers. 'Let's get at it. Twice five; will that
do? Three times five; will that do? Four times five; will that do?'

I said I thought that would do handsomely.

'Four times five will do handsomely, will it?' said Mr. Jaggers,
knitting his brows. 'Now, what do you make of four times five?'

'What do I make of it!'

'Ah!' said Mr. Jaggers; 'how much?'

'I suppose you make it twenty pounds,' said I, smiling.

'Never mind what / make it, my friend,' observed Mr. Jaggers,
with a knowing and contradictory toss of the head. 'I want to know
what you make it?'

'Twenty pounds, of course.'

'Wemmick!' said Mr. Jaggers, opening his office door. 'Take
Mr. Pip's written order, and pay him twenty pounds.'

This strongly marked way of doing business made a strongly
marked impression on me, and that not of an agreeable kind. Mr.
Jaggers never laughed; but he wore great bright creaking boots;
and, in poising himself on those boots, with his large head bent
down and his eyebrows joined together, awaiting an answer, he

190 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

sometimes caused the boots to creak, as if they laughed in a dry
and suspicious way. As he happened to go out now, and as Wem-
mick was brisk and talkative, I said to Wemmick that I hardly
knew what to make of Mr. Jaggers's manner.

'Tell him that, and he'll take it as a compliment,' answered
Wemmick ; 'he don't mean that you should know what to make of
it. — Oh!' for I looked surprised, 'it's not personal; it's profession-
al: only professional.'

Wemmick was at his desk, lunching — and crunching — on a dry
hard biscuit; pieces of which he threw from time to time into his
slit of a mouth, as if he were posting them.

'Always seems to me,' said Wemmick, 'as if he had set a man-
trap and was watching it. Suddenly — click — you're caught!'

Without remarking that man-traps were not among the ameni-
ties of life, I said I supposed he was very skilful?

'Deep,' said Wemmick, 'as Australia.' Pointing with his pen at
the office floor, to express that Australia was understood, for the
purpose of the figure, to be symmetrically on the opposite spot of
the globe. 'If there was anything deeper,' added Wemmick, bring-
ing his pen to paper, 'he'd be it.'

Then, I said I supposed he had a fine business, and Wemmick
said, 'Ca-pi-tal!' Then I asked if there were many clerks? to
which he replied:

'We don't run much into clerks, because there's only one Jag-
gers, and people won't have him at second-hand. There are only
four of us. Would you like to see 'em? You are one of us, as I
may say.'

I accepted the offer. When Mr. Wemmick had put all the bis-
cuit into the post, and had paid me my money from a cash-box in
a safe, the key of which safe he kept somewhere down his back,
and produced from his coat-collar like an iron pigtail, we went up-
stairs. The house was dark and shabby, and the greasy shoulders
that had left their mark in Mr. Jaggers's room seemed to have been
shuffling up and down the staircase for years. In the front first
floor, a clerk who looked something between a publican and a
rat-catcher — a large pale puffed swollen man — ^was attentively en-
gaged with three or four people of shabby appearance whom he

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 191

treated as unceremoniously as everybody seemed to be treated who
contributed to Mr. Jaggers's coffers. 'Getting evidence together,'
said Mr. Wemmick, as we came out, 'for the Bailey.' In the room
over that, a little flabby terrier of a clerk with dangling hair (his
cropping seemed to have been forgotten when he was a puppy)
was similarly engaged with a man with weak eyes, whom Mr.
Wemmick presented to me as a smelter who kept his pot always
boiling, and who would melt me anything I pleased — and who was
in an excessive white-perspiration, as if he had been trying his art
on himself. In a back room, a high-shouldered man with a face-
ache tied up in dirty flannel, who was dressed in old black clothes
that bore the appearance of having been waxed, was stooping over
his work of making fair copies of the notes of the other two gentle-
men, for Mr. Jaggers's own use.

This was all the establishment. When we went downstairs
again, Wemmick led me into my guardian's room, and said, 'This
you've seen already.'

'Pray,' said I, as the two odious casts with the twitchy leer upon
them caught my sight again, 'whose likenesses are those?'

'These?' said Wemmick, getting upon a chair, and blowing the
dust off the horrible heads before bringing them down. 'These are
two celebrated ones. Famous clients of ours that got us a world of
credit. This chap (why you must have come down in the night and
been peeping into the inkstand, to get this blot upon your eyebrow,
you old rascal!) murdered his master, and, considering that he
wasn't brought up to evidence, didn't plan it badly.'

'Is it like him?' I asked, recoiling from the brute, as Wemmick
spat upon his eyebrow, and gave it a rub with his sleeve.

'Like him? It's himself, you know. The cast was made in New-
gate, directly after he was taken down. You had a particular fancy
for me, hadn't you Old Artful?' said Wemmick. He then explained
this affectionate apostrophe, by touching his brooch representing
the lady and the weeping willow at the tomb with the urn upon it.
and said, 'Had it made for me express!'

^Is the lady anybody?' said I.

^No,' returned Wemmick. 'Only his game. (You liked your bit
of game, didn't you?) No; deuce a bit of a lady in the case, Mr,

192 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

Pip, except one — and she wasn't of this slender lady-like sort, and
you wouldn't have caught her looking after this urn — unless there
was something to drink in it.' Wemmick's atention being thus di-
rected to his brooch, he put down the cast, and polished the brooch
with his pocket-handkerchief.

'Did that other creature come to the same end?' I asked. 'He
has the same look.'

'You're right,' said Wemmick; 'it's the genuine look. Much as
if one nostril was caught up with a horsehair and a little fish-hook.
Yes, he came to the same end; quite the natural end here, I assure
you. He forged wills, this blade did, if he didn't also put the sup-
posed testators to sleep too. You were a gentlemanly Cove, though'
(Mr. Wemmick was again apostrophising), 'and you said you
could write Greek. Yah, Bounceable! What a liar you were! I
never met such a liar as you!' Before putting his late friend on
his shelf again, Wemmick touched the largest of his mourning
rings, and said, 'Sent out to buy it for me, only the day before.'

While he was putting up the other cast and coming down from
the chair, the thought crossed my mind that all his personal jewel-
lery was derived from like sources. As he had shown no diffidence
on the subject, I ventured on the liberty of asking him the ques-
tion, when he stood before me, dusting his hands.

*0h yes,' he returned, 'these are all gifts of that kind. One
brings another, you see; that's the way of it. I always take 'ern.
They're curiosities. And they're property. They may not be worth
much, but, after all, they're property and portable. It don't sig-
nify to you with your brilliant lookout, but as to myself, my guid-
ing-star always is. Get hold of portable property.'

When I had rendered homage to this light, he went on to say in
a friendly manner:

'If at any odd time when you have nothing better to do, you
wouldn't mind coming over to see me at Walworth, I could offer
you a bed, and I should consider it an honour. I have not much to
show you; but such two or three curiosities as I have got, you
might like to look over; and I'm fond of a bit of garden and a
summer-house.'

I said I should be delighted to accept his hospitality.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 193

^Thankee,' said he: 'then we'll consider that it's to come off,
when convenient to you. Have you dined with Mr. Jaggers yet?'

'Not yet.'

'Well,' said Wemmick, 'he'll give you wine, and good wine. I'll
give you punch, and not bad punch. And now I'll tell yoi some-
thing. When you go to dine with Mr. Jaggers, look at his house-
keeper.'

'Shall I see something very uncommon?'

'Well,' said Wemmick, 'you'll see a wild beast tamed. Not so
very uncommon, you'll tell me. I reply, that depends on the orig-
inal wildness of the beast, and the amount of taming. It won't low-
er your opinion of Mr. Jaggers's powers. Keep your eye on it.'

I told him I would do so, with all the interest and curiosity that
his preparations awakened. As I was taking my departure, he
asked me if I would like to devote five minutes to seeing Mr. Jag-
gers 'at it'?

For several reasons, and not least because I didn't clearly know
what Mr. Jaggers would be found to be 'at,' I replied in the affir-
mative. We dived into the City, and came up in a crowded police-
court, where a blood-relation (in the murderous sense) of the de-
ceased with the fanciful taste in brooches, was standing at the bar,
uncomfortably chewing something ; while my guardian had a wom-
an under examination or cross-examination — I don't know which
— and was striking her, and the bench, and everybody with awe.
If anybody, of whatsoever degree, said a word that he didn't ap-
prove of, he instantly required to have it 'taken down.' If anybody
wouldn't make an admission, he said, 'I'll have it out of you!' and
if anybody made an admission, he said 'Now I have got you! ' The
magistrates shivered under a single bite of his finger. Thieves and
thieftakers hung in dread rapture on his words, and shrank when a
hair of his eyebrows turned in their direction. Which side he was
on, I couldn't make out, for he seemed to me to be grinding the
whole place in a mill ; I only know that when I stole out on tiptoe,
he was not on the side of the bench; for, he was making the legs
of the old gentleman who presided, quite convulsive under the ta-
ble, by his denunciations of his conduct as the representative oi
British law and justice in that chair that day.

194 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

CHAPTER XXV

Bentley Drummle, who was so sulky a fellow that he even took
up a book as if its writer had done him an injury, did not take up
an acquaintance in a more agreeable spirit. Heavy in figure, move-
ment, and comprehension — in the sluggish complexion of his face,
and in the large awkward tongue that seemed to loll about in his
mouth as he himself lolled about in a room — he was idle, proud,
niggardly, reserved, and suspicious. He came of rich people down
in Somersetshire, who had nursed this combination of qualities un-
til they made the discovery that it was just of age and a blockhead.
Thus, Bentley Drummle had come to Mr. Pocket when he was a
head taller than that gentleman, and half a dozen heads thicker
than most gentlemen.

Startop had been spoiled by a weak mother, and kept at home
when he ought to have been at school, but he was devotedly at-
tached to her, and admired her beyond measure. He had a wom-
an's delicacy of feature, and was — *as you may see, though you
never saw her,' said Herbert to me — 'exactly like his mother.' It
was but natural that I should take to him much more kindly than
to Drummle, and that, even in the earliest evenings of our boating,
he and I should pull homeward abreast of one another, conversing
from boat to boat, while Bentley Drummle came up in our wake
alone, under the overhanging banks and among the rushes. He
would always creep in-shore like some uncomfortable amphibious
creature, even when the tide would have sent him fast upon his
way ; and I always think of him as coming after us in the dark or
by the back-water, when our own two boats were breaking the sun-
set or the moonlight in mid-stream.

Herbert was my intimate companion and friend. I presented
him with a half-share in my boat, which was the occasion of his
often coming down to Hammersmith ; and my possession of a half-
share in his chambers often took me up to London. We used to
walk between the two places at all hours. I have an affection for

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 195

the road yet (though it is not so pleasant a road as it was then),
formed in the impressibility of untried youth and hope.

When I had been in Mr. Pocket's family a month or two, Mr.

j and Mrs. Camilla turned up. Camilla was Mr. Pocket's sister.

j Georgiana, whom I had seen at Miss Havisham's on the same oc-

; casion, also turned up. She was a cousin — an indigestive single

j woman, who called her rigidity religion, and her liver love. These

people hated me with the hatred of cupidity and disappointment.

ij As a matter of course, they fawned upon me in my prosperity with

the basest meanness. Towards Mr. Pocket, as a grown-up infant

with no notion of his own interests, they showed the complacent

j forbearance I had heard them express. Mrs. Pocket they held in

j contempt; but they allowed the poor soul to have been heavily

disappointed in life, because that shed a feeble reflected light upon

themselves.

These were the surroundings among which I settled down, and
applied myself to my education. I soon contracted expensive hab-
its, and began to spend an amount of money that within a few
short months I should have thought almost fabulous ; but through
good and evil I stuck to my books. There was no other merit in
this, than my having sense enough to feel my deficiencies. Be-
tween Mr. Pocket and Herbert I got on fast; and, with one or the
other always at my elbow to give me the start I wanted, and clear
obstructions out of my road, I must have been as great a dolt as
Drummle if I had done less.

I had not seen Mr. Wemmick for some weeks, when I thought
1 1 would write him a note and propose to go home with him on a
I certain evening. He replied that it would give him much pleasure,
\ and that he would expect me at the office at six o'clock. Thither I
went, and there I found him, putting the key of his safe down his
^ back as the clock struck.

'Did you think of walking down to Walworth?' said he.
'Certainly,' said I, 'if you approve.'

'Very much,' was Wemmick's reply, 'for I have had my legs

'.under the desk all day, and shall be glad to stretch them. Now I'll

jitell you what I've got for supper, Mr. Pip. I have got a stewed

• steak — which is of home preparation — and a cold roast fowl--

196 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

which is from the cook's-shop. 1 think it's tender, because the
master of the shop was a Juryman in some cases of ours the other
day, and we let him do\\n easy. I reminded him of it when I
bought the fowl, and I said, 'Tick us out a good one, old Briton,
because if we had chosen to keep you m the box another day or
two, we could have done it." He said to that, "Let me make you a
present of the best fowl in the shop." I let him of course. As far
as it goes, it's property and portable. You don't object to an aged
parent, I hope?'

I really thought he was still speaking of the fowl, until he added,
'Because I have got an aged parent at my place.' I then said what
politeness required.

'So you haven't dined with Mr. Jaggers yet?' he pursued, as we
walked along.

'Not yet.'

'He told me so this afternoon when he heard you were coming.
I expect you'll have an invitation tomorrow. He's going to ask
your pals, too. Three of 'em; ain't there?'

Although I was not in the habit of counting Drummle as one of
my intimate associates, I answered, 'Yes.'

'Well, he's going to ask the whole gang'; I hardly felt compli-
mented by the word; 'and whatever he gives you, he'll give you
good. Don't look forward to variety, but you'll have excellence.
And there's another rum thing in his house,' proceeded Wemmick
after a moment's pause, as if the remark followed on the house-
keeper understood ; 'he never lets a door or window be fastened at
night.'

'Is he never robbed?'

'That's it!' returned Wemmick. 'He says, and gives it out pub-
licly, "I want to see the man who'll rob we." Lord bless you, I
have heard him, a hundred times if I have heard once, say to regu-
lar cracksmen in our front office, "You know where I live; now no
bolt is ever drawn there; why don't you do a stroke of business
with me? Come; can't I tempt you?" Not a man of them, sir,
would be bold enough to try it on, for love or money.'

'They dread him so much?' said I.

'Dread him.' said Wemmick. 'I believe you they dread him.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 197

Xot but what he's artful, even in his defiance of them. No silver.
sir. Britannia metal, every spoon.'

'So they wouldn't have much,' I observed, 'even if they '

'Ah I But he would have much,' said Wemmick, cutting me
short, 'and they know it. He'd have their lives, and the lives of
scores of 'em. He'd have all he could get. And it's impossible to
say what he couldn't get, if he gave his mind to it.'

I was falling into meditation on my guardian's greatness, when
Wemmick remarked:

'As to the absence of plate, that's only his natural depth, you
know. A river's its natural depth, and he's his natural depth. Look
at his watch-chain. That's real enough.'

'It's very massive,' said I.

'Massive?' repeated Wemmick. 'I think so. And his watch is a
gold repeater, and worth a hundred pound if it's worth a penny.
Mr. Pip, there are about seven hundred thieves in this town who
know all about that watch; there's not a man, a woman, or a child,
among them, who wouldn't identify the smallest link in that chain,
and drop it as if it was red-hot, if inveigled into touching it.'

At first with such discourse, and afterwards with conversation of
a more general nature, did Mr. Wemmick and I beguile the time
and the road, until he gave me to understand that we had arrived
in the district of Walworth.

It appeared to be a collection of black lanes, ditches, and little
gardens, and to present the aspect of a rather dull retirement.
Wemmick 's house was a little w^ooden cottage in the midst of plots
of garden, and the top of it was cut out and painted like a battery
mounted with guns.

']My own doing,' said Wemmick. 'Looks pretty; don't it?'

I highly commended it. I think it was the smallest house I ever
saw; with the queerest gothic windows (by far the greater part of
them sham) , and a gothic door, almost too small to get in at.

'That's a real flagstaff, you see,' said Wemmick, 'and on Sun-
days I run up a real flag. Then look here. After I have crossed
this bridge, I hoist it up — so — and cut off the communication.'

The bridge was a plank, and it crossed a chasm about four feet
wide, and two deep. But it was very pleasant to see the pride with

198 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

which he hoisted it up, and made it fast ; smiling as he did so, with
a relish, and not merely mechanically.

^At nine o'clock every night, Greenwich time,' said Wemmick,
'the gun fires. There he is, you see! And when you hear him go, I
think you'll say he's a Stinger.'

The piece of ordnance referred to, was mounted in a separate
fortress, constructed of lattice-work. It was protected from the
weather by an ingenious little tarpaulin contrivance in the nature
of an umbrella.

'Then, at the back,' said Wemmick, 'out of sight, so as not to
impede the idea of fortifications — for it's a principle with him, if
you have an idea, carry it out and keep it up — I don't know wheth-
er that's your opinion '

I said, decidedly.

' — At the back, there's a pig, and there are fowls and rabbits;
then I knock together my own little frame, you see, and grow
cucumbers; and you'll judge at supper what sort of a salad I can
raise. So, sir,' said Wemmick, smiling again, but seriousty, too, as
he shook his head, 'if you can suppose the little place besieged, it
would hold out a devil of a time in point of provisions.'

Then, he conducted me to a bower about a dozen yards off, but
which was approached by such ingenious twists of path that it
took quite a long time to get at ; and in this retreat our glasses were
already set forth. Our punch was cooling in an ornamental lake,
on whose margin the bower was raised. This piece of water (with
an island in the middle which might have been the salad for sup-
per) was of a circular form, and he had constructed a fountain in
it, which, when you set a little mill going and took a cork out of a
pipe, played to that powerful extent that it made the back of your
hand quite wet.

'I am my own engineer, and my own carpenter, and my own
plumber, and my own gardener, and my own Jack of all Trades,'
said Wemmick, in acknowledging my compliments. 'Well, it's a
good thing, you know. It brushes the Newgate cobwebs away, and
pleases the Aged. You wouldn't mind being at once introduced to
the Aged, would you? It wouldn't put you out?'

I expressed the readiness I felt, and we went into the castle.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 199

There, we found, sitting by a fire, a very old man in a flannel coat:
clean, cheerful, comfortable, and well cared for, but intensely deaf.

Well, aged parent,' said Wemmick, shaking hands with him in a
cordial and jocose way, 'how am you?'

'All right, John; all right!' replied the old man.

'Here's Mr. Pip, aged parent,' said Wemmick, 'and I wish you
could hear his name. Nod away at him, Mr. Pip; that's what he
likes. Nod away at him, if you please, like winking!'

'This is a fine place of my son's, sir,' cried the old man, while I
nodded as hard as I possibly could. 'This is a pretty pleasure-
ground, sir. This spot and these beautiful works upon it ought to
be kept together by the Nation, after my son's time, for the peo-
ple's enjoyment.'

'You're as proud of it as Punch; ain't you. Aged?' said Wem-
mick, contemplating the old man, with his hard face really soft-
ened; there^s sl nod for you'; giving him a tremendous one; 'there's
another for you,' giving him a still more tremendous one; 'you like
that, don't you? If you're not tired, Mr. Pip — though I know it's
tiring to strangers — will you tip him one more? You can't think
how it pleases him.'

I tipped him several more, and he was in great spirits. We left
him bestirring himself to feed the fowls, and we sat down to our
punch in the arbour; where Wemmick told me as he smoked a
pipe, that it had taken him a good many years to bring the prop-
erty up to its present pitch of perfection.

'Is it your own, Mr. Wemmick?'

'O yes,' said Wemmick, 'I have got hold of it, a bit at a time.
It's a freehold, by George!'

'Is it indeed? I hope Mr. Jaggers admires it?'

'Never seen it,' said Wemmick. 'Never heard of it. Never seen
the Aged. Never heard of him. No; the office is one thing, and
private life is another. When I go into the office, I leave the Castle
behind me, and when I come into the Castle, I leave the office
behind me. If it's not in any way disagreeable to you, you'll oblige
me by doing the same. I don't wish it professionally spoken about.'

Of course I felt my good faith involved in the observance of his
request. The punch being very nice, we sat there drinking it and

200 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

talking, until it was almost nine o'clock. 'Getting near gun-fire/
said Wemmick then, as he laid down his pipe; 'it's the Aged's
treat;

Proceeding into the Castle again, w^e found the x\ged heating the
poker, with expectant eyes, as a preliminary to the performance of
this great nightly ceremony. Wemmick stood with his watch in his
hand until the moment was come for him to take the red-hot
poker from the Aged, and repair to the battery. He took it, and
went out, and presently the Stinger went off with a bang that shook
the crazy little box of a cottage as if it must fall to pieces, and
made every glass and teacup in it ring. Upon this the Aged — who
I believe would have been blown out of his arm-chair but for hold-
ing on by the elbows — cried out exultingly, 'He's fired! I heerd
him!' and I nodded at the old gentleman until it is no figure of
speech to declare that I absolutely could not see him.

The interval between that time and supper, Wemmick devoted
to showing me his collection of curiosities. They were mostly of a
felonious character; comprising the pen with which a celebrated
forgery had been committed, a distinguished razor or two, some
locks of hair, and several manuscript confessions written under
condemnation — upon which Mr. Wemmick set particular value as
being, to use his own words, 'every one of 'em Lies, sir.' These
were agreeably dispersed among small specimens of china and
glass, various neat trifles made by the proprietor of the museum,
and some tobacco-stoppers carved by the Aged. They were all dis-
played in that chamber of the Castle into which I had been first
inducted, and which served, not only as the general sitting-room,
but as the kitchen too, if I might judge from a saucepan on the
hob, and a brazen bijou over the fireplace designed for the sus-
pension of a roasting-jack.

There was a neat little girl in attendance, who looked after the
Aged in the day. When she had laid the supper-cloth, the bridge
was lowered to give her the means of egress, and she withdrew for
the night. The supper was excellent; and though the Castle was
rather subject to dry-rot, insomuch that it tasted like a bad nut,
and though the pig might have been farther off, I was heartily
pleasec with my whole entertainment. Nor was there any draw-

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 201

back on my little turret bedroom, beyond there being such a very
thin ceiling between me and the flagstaff, that when I lay down on
my back in bed, it seemed as if I had to balance that pole on my
forehead all night.

Wemmick was up early in the morning, and I am afraid I heard
him cleaning my boots. After that, he fell to gardening, and I saw
him from my gothic window pretending to employ the Aged, and
nodding at him in a most devoted manner. Our breakfast was as
good as the supper, and at half-past eight precisely we started for
Little Britain. By degrees, Wemmick got dryer and harder as we
went along, and his mouth tightened into a post-office again. At
last, when we got to his place of business and he pulled out his
key from his coat-collar, he looked as unconscious of his Walworth
property as if the Castle and the draw-bridge and the arbour and
the lake and the fountain and the Aged, had all been blown into
space together by the last discharge of the Stinger.

CHAPTER XXVI

It fell out as Wemmick had told me it would, that I had an early
opportunity of comparing my guardian's establishment with that
of his cashier and clerk. My guardian was in his room, washing his
hands with his scented soap, when I went into the office from
Walworth; and he called me to him, and gave me the invitation for
myself and friends which Wemmick had prepared me to receive.
'No ceremony,' he stipulated, 'and no dinner dress, and say to-
morrow.' I asked him where we should come to (for I had no idea
where he lived), and I believe it was in his general objection to
make anything like an admission, that he replied, 'Come here, and
I'll take you home with me.' I embrace this opportunity of re-
marking that he washed his clients off, as if it were a surgeon or a
dentist. He had a closet in his room, fitted up for the purpose,
which smelt of the scented soap like a perfumer's shop. It had an
unusually large jack-towel on a roller inside the door, and he would
wash his hands, and wipe them and dry them all over this towel,

202 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

whenever he came in from a police-court or dismissed a client
from his room. When I and my friends repaired to him at six
o'clock next day, he seemed to have been engaged on a case of a
darker complexion than usual, for, we found him with his head
butted into this closet, not only w^ashing his hands, but laving his
face and gargling his throat. And even when he had done all that,
and had gone all round the jack-towel, he took out his penknife
and scraped the case out of his nails before he put his coat on.

There were some people slinking about as usual when we passed
out into the street, who were evidently anxious to speak with him;
but there w^as something so conclusive in the halo of scented soap
which encircled his presence, that they gave it up for that day.
As we walked along westward, he was recognised ever and again
by some face in the crowd of the streets, and whenever that hap-
pened he talked louder to me : but he never otherwise recognised
anybody, or took notice that anybody recognised him.

He conducted us to Gerrard Street. Soho. to a house on the south
side of that street, rather a stately house of its kind, but dolefully
in want of painting, and with dirty windows. He took out his key
and opened the door, and we all went into a stone hall, bare,
gloomy, and little used. So. up a dark brown staircase into a
series of three dark brown rooms on the first floor. There were
carved garlands on the panelled walls, and as he stood among them
giving us welcome, I know what kind of loops I thought they
looked like.

Dinner was laid in the best of these rooms; the second was his
dressing-room; the third, his bedroom. He told us that he held the
whole house, but rarely used more of it than we saw. The table
was comfortably laid — no silver in the service, of course — and at
the side of his chair was a capacious dumb-waiter, with a variety
of bottles and decanters on it, and four dishes of fruit for dessert.
I noticed throughout, that he kept everything under his own hand,
and distributed everything himself.

There was a bookcase in the room : I saw from the backs of the
books, that they were about evidence, criminal law. criminal bi-
ography, trials, acts of parliament, and such things. The furniture
was all very solid and good, like his watch-chain. It had an offi-

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 203

cial look, however, and there was nothing merely ornamental to
be seen. In a corner, was a little table of papers with a shaded
lamp ; so that he seemed to bring the office home with him in that
respect too, and to wheel it out of an evening and fall to work.

As he had scarcely seen my three companions until now — for, he
and I had walked together — he stood on the hearth-rug, after ring-
ing the bell, and took a searching look at them. To my surprise, he
seemed at once to be principally, if not solely, interested in
Drummle.

Tip,' said he, putting his large hand on my shoulder and moving
me to the window, 1 don't know one from the other. Who's the
Spider?'

The spider?' said I.

The blotchy, sprawly, sulky fellow.'

That's Bentley Drummle,' I replied; Hhe one with the del-
icate face is Startop.'

Not making the least account of 'the one with the delicate face,'
he returned, 'Bentley Drummle is his name, is it? I Hke the look
of that fellow.'

He immediately began to talk to Drummle: not at all deterred
by his replying in his heavy reticent way, but apparently led on
by it to screw discourse out of him. I was looking at the two,
when there came between me and them, the housekeeper, with the
first dish for the table.

She was a woman of about forty, I supposed — but I may have
thought her younger than she was. Rather tall, of a lithe nimble
figure, extremely pale, with large faded eyes, and a quantity of
streaming hair. I cannot say whether any diseased affection of the
heart caused her lips to be parted as if she were panting, and her
face to bear a curious expression of suddenness and flutter; but
I know that I had been to see Macbeth at the theatre, a night or
two before, and that her face looked to me as if it were all dis-
turbed by fiery air, like the faces I had seen rise out of the Witches'
caldron.

She set the dish on, touched my guardian quietly on the arm
with a finger to notify that dinner was ready, and vanished. We
took our seats at the round table, and my guardian kept Drummle

204 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

on one side of him, while Startop sat on the other. It was a noble
dish of fish that the housekeeper had put on table, and we had a
joint of equally choice mutton afterwards, and then an equally
choice bird. Sauces, wines, all the accessories we wanted, and all
of the best, were given out by our host from his dumb-waiter ; and
when they had made the circuit of the table, he always put them
back again. Similarly, he dealt us clean plates and knives and
forks, for eacn course, and dropped those just disused into two
baskets on the ground by his chair. No other attendant than the
housekeeper appeared. She set on every dish; and I always saw
in her face, a face rising out of the caldron. Years afterwards, I
made a dreadful likeness of that woman, by causing a face that
had no other natural resemblance to it than it derived from flow-
ing hair, to pass behind a bowl of flaming spirits in a dark room.

Induced to take particular notice of the housekeeper, both by
her own striking appearance and by Wemmick's preparation, I ob-
served that whenever she was in the room, she kept her eyes at-
tentively on my guardian, and that she would remove her hands
from any dish she put before him, hesitatingly, as if she dreaded
his calling her back, and wanted him to speak when she was nigh,
if he had anything to say. I fancied that I could detect in his
manner a consciousness of this, and a purpose of always holding
her in suspense.

Dinner went off gaily, and, although my guardian seemed to fol-
low rather than originate subjects, I knew that he wrenched the
weakest part of our dispositions out of us. For myself, I found that
I was expressing my tendency to lavish expenditure, and to patron-
ise Herbert, and to boast of my great prospects, before I quite
knew that I had opened my lips. It was so with all of us, but with
no one more than Drummle: the development of whose inclination
to gird in a grudging and suspicious way at the rest, was screwed
out of him before the fish was taken off.

It was not then, but when we had got to the cheese, that our
conversation turned upon our rowing feats, and that Drummle was
rallied for coming up behind of a night in that slow amphibious
way of his. Drummle upon this, informed our host that he much
preferred our room to our company, and that as to skill he was

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 205

more than our master, and that as to strength he could scatter us
like chaff. By some invisible agency, my guardian wound him up
to a pitch little short of ferocity about this trifle; and he fell to
baring and spanning his arm to show how muscular it was, and we
all fell to baring and spanning our arms in a ridiculous manner.

Now, the housekeeper was at that time clearing the table; my
guardian, taking no heed of her, but with the side of his face turned
from her, was leaning back in his chair biting the side of his fore-
finger and showing an interest in Drummle, that, to me, was quite
inexplicable. Suddenly, he clapped his large hand on the house-
keeper's, like a trap, as she stretched it across the table. So sud-
denly and smartly did he do this, that we all stopped in our foolish
contention.

'If you talk of strength,' said Mr. Jaggers, 711 show you a wrist.
Molly, let them see your wrist.'

Her entrapped hand was on the table, but she had already put
her other hand behind her waist. 'Master,' she said, in a low
voice, with her eyes attentively and entreatingly fixed upon him
^Don't.'

711 show you a wrist,' repeated Mr. Jaggers, with an immovable
determination to show it. 'Molly, let them see your wrist.'

'Master,' she again murmured. 'Please!'

'Molly,' said Mr. Jaggers, not looking at her, but obstinately
looking at the opposite side of the room, 'let them see both your
wrists. Show them. Come!'

He took his hand from hers, and turned that wrist up on the
table. She brought her other hand from behind her, and held the
two out side by side. The last wrist was much disfigured — deeply
scarred and scarred across and across. When she held her hands
out, she took her eyes from Mr. Jaggers, and turned them watch-
fully on every one of the rest of us in succession.

'There's power here,' said Mr. Jaggers, coolly tracing out the
sinews with his forefinger. 'Very few men have the power of wrist
that this woman has. It's remarkable what mere force of grip
there is in these hands. I have had occasion to notice many hands:
but I never saw stronger in that respect, man's or woman's, than
these.'

206 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

While he said these words in a leisurely critical style, she con-
tinued to look at every one of us in regular succession as we sat.
The moment he ceased, she looked at him again. 'That'll do,
Molly,' said Mr. Jaggers, giving her a slight nod; 'you have been
admired, and can go.' She withdrew her hands and went out of the
room, and Mr. Jaggers, putting the decanters on from his dumb-
waiter, filled his glass and passed round the wine.

At half-past nine, gentlemen,' said he, 'we must break up. Pray
make the best use of your time, I am glad to see you all. Mr.
Drummle, I drink to you.'

If his object in singling out Mr. Drummle were to bring him out
still more, it perfectly succeeded. In a sulky triumph, Drummle
showed his morose depreciation of the rest of us, in a more and
more offensive degree, until he became downright intolerable.
Through all his stages, Mr. Jaggers followed him with the same
strange interest. He actually seemed to serve as a zest to Mr. Jag-
gers's wine.

In our boyish want of discretion I dare say we took too much
to drink, and I know we talked too much. We became particularly
hot upon some boorish sneer of Drummle's, to the effect that we
were too free with our money. It led to my remarking, with more
zeal than discretion, that it came with a bad grace from him, to
whom Startop had lent money in my presence but a week or so
before.

'Well,' retorted Drummle, 'he'll be paid.'

'I don't mean to imply that he won't,' said I, 'but it might make
you hold your tongue about us and our money, I should think.'

^You should think I ' retorted Drummle. 'Oh Lord! '

'I dare say,' I went on, meaning to be very severe, 'that you
wouldn't lend money to any of us if we wanted it.'

'You are right,' said Drummle. 'I wouldn't lend one of you a
sixpence. I wouldn't lend anybody a sixpence.'

'Rather mean to borrow under those circumstances, I should
say.'

'You should say!' repeated Drummle. 'Oh Lord!'

This was so very aggravating — the more especially as I found

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 207

myself making no way against his surly obtuseness — that I said,
disregarding Herbert's effort to check me:

'Come, Mr. Drummle, since we are on the subject, I'll tell you
what passed between Herbert here and me, when you borrowed
that money.'

7 don't want to know what passed between Herbert there and
you,' growled Drummle. And I think he added in a lower growl,
that we might both go to the devil and shake ourselves.

'I'll tell you, however,' said I, whether you want to know or not.
We said that as you put it into your pocket very glad to get it,
you seemed to be immensely amused at his being so weak as to
lend it.

Drummle laughed outright, and sat laughing in our faces, with
his hands in his pockets and his round shoulders raised; plainly
signifying that it was quite true, and that he despised us as asses
all.

Hereupon Startop took him in hand, though with a much better
grace than I had shown, and exhorted him to be a little more agree-
able. Startop, being a lively bright young fellow, and Drummle
being the exact opposite, the latter was always disposed to resent
him as a direct personal affront. He now retorted in a coarse lump-
ish way, and Startop tried to turn the discussion aside with some
small pleasantry that made us all laugh. Resenting this little suc-
cess more than anything, Drummle, without any threat or warn-
ing, pulled his hands out of his pockets, dropped his round shoul-
ders, swore, took up a large glass, and would have flung it at his
adversary's head, but for our entertainer's dexterously seizing it
at the instant when it was raised for that purpose.

'Gentlemen,' said Mr. Jaggers, deliberately putting down the
glass, and hauling out his gold repeater by its massive chain, 'I
am exceedingly sorry to announce that it's half-past nine.'

On this hint we all rose to depart. Before we got to the street
door, Startop was cheerily calling Drummle 'old boy,' as if nothing
had happened. But the old boy was so far from responding, that
he would not even walk to Hammersmith on the same side of the
way; so, Herbert and I, who remained in town, saw them going

208 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

down the street on opposite sides; Startop leading, and Drummle
lagging behind in the shadow of the houses, much as he was wont
to follow in his boat.

As the door was not yet shut, I thought I would leave Herbert
there for a moment, and run upstairs again to say a word to my
guardian. I found him in his dressing-room surrounded by his
stock of boots, already hard at it, washing his hands of us.

I told him I had come up again to say how sorry I was that any-
thing disagreeable should have occurred, and that I hoped he
would not blame me much.

Tooh!' said he, sluicing his face, and speaking through the
water-drops; 'it's nothing, Pip. I like that Spider though.'

He had turned towards me now, and was shaking his head, and
blowing, and towelling himself.

'I am glad you like him, sir,' said I — 'but I don't.'

'No, no,' my guardian assented; 'don't have too much to do with
him. Keep as clear of him as you can. But I like th3 fellow, Pip;
he is one of the true sort. Why, if I was a fortune-teller — '

Looking out of the towel, he caught my eye.

'But I am not a fortune-teller,' he said, letting his head drop
into a festoon of towel, and towelling away at his two ears. 'You
know what I am, don't you? Good-night, Pip.'

'Good-night, sir.'

In about a month after that, the Spider's time with Mr. Pocket
was up for good, and, to the great relief of all the house but Mrs.
Pocket, he went home to the family hole.

CHAPTER XXVII

'My Dear Mr. Pip,

'I write this by request of Mr. Gargery, for to let you know
that he is going to London in company with Mr. Wopsle and would
be glad if agreeable to be allowed to see you. He would call at
Barnard's Hotel Tuesday morning at nine o'clock, when if not
agreeable please leave word. Your poor sister is very much the

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 209

same as when you left. We talk of you in the kitchen every night,
and wonder what you are saying and doing. If now considered in
the light of a liberty, excuse it for the love of poor old days. No
more, dear Mr. Pip, from

'Your ever obliged, and affectionate servant,

'Biddy.

T.S. He wishes me most particular to write what larks. He
says you will understand. I hope and do not doubt it will be agree-
able to see him even though a gentleman, for you had ever a good
heart, and he is a worthy worthy man. I have read him all except-
ing only the last little sentence, and he wishes me most particular
to write again what larks,*

I received this letter by post on Monday morning, and there-
fore its appointment was for next day. Let me confess exactly,
with what feelings I looked forward to Joes coming.

Not with pleasure, though I was bound to him by so many ties;
no, with considerable disturbance, some mortification, and a keen
sense of incongruity. If I could have kept him away by paying
money, I certainly would have paid money. My greatest reassur-
ance was, that he was coming to Barnard's Inn, not to Hammer-
smith, and consequently would not fall in Bentley Drummle's way.
I had little objection to his being seen by Herbert or his father,
for both of whom I had a respect; but I had the sharpest sensitive-
ness as to his being seen by Drummle, whom 1 held in contempt.
So, throughout life, our worst weaknesses and meannesses are usu-
ally committed for the sake of the people whom we most despise.

I had begun to be always decorating the chambers in some quite
unnecessary and inappropriate way or other, and very expensive
those wrestles with Barnard proved to be. By this time, the rooms
were vastly different from what I had found them, and I enjoyed
the honour of occupying a few prominent pages in the books of a
neighbouring upholsterer. I had got on so fast of late, that I had
even started a boy in boots — top boots — in bondage and slavery
to whom I might be said to pass my days. For, after I had made
this monster (out of the refuse of my washerwoman's family) and

210 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

had clothed him with a blue coat, canary waistcoat, white cravat,
creamy breeches, and the boots already mentioned, I had to find
him a little to do and a great deal to eat ; and with both of these
horrible requirements he haunted my existence.

This avenging phantom was ordered to be on duty at eight on
Tuesday morning in the hall (it was two feet square, as charged
for floorcloth), and Herbert suggested certain things for breakfast
that he thought Joe would like. While I felt sincerely obliged to
him for being so interested and considerate, I had an odd half-
provoked sense of suspicion upon me, that if Joe had been coming
to see him, he wouldn't have been quite so brisk about it.

However, I came into town on the Monday night to be ready for
Joe, and I got up early in the morning, and caused the sitting-room
and breakfast-table to assume their most splendid appearance.
Unfortunately the morning was drizzly, and an angel could not
have concealed the fact that Barnard was shedding sooty tears out-
side the window, like some weak giant of a Sweep.

As the time approached I should have liked to run away, but the
Avenger pursuant to orders was in the hall, and presently I heard
Joe, on the staircase. I knew it was Joe, by his clumsy manner of
coming upstairs — ^his state boots being always too big for him —
and by the time it took him to read the names on the other floors
in the course of his ascent. When at last he stopped outside our
door, I could hear his finger tracing over the painted letters of my
name, and I afterwards distinctly heard him breathing in at the
keyhole. Finally he gave a faint single rap, and Pepper — such
was the compromising name of the avenging boy — announced 'Mr.
Gargery ! ' I thought he never would have done wiping his feet, and
that I must have gone out to lift him off the mat, but at last he
came in.

'Joe, how are you, Joe?'

Tip, how AIR you, Pip?'

With his good honest face all glowing and shining, and his hat
put down on the floor between us, he caught both my hands and
worked them straight up and down, as if I had been the last-
patented Pump.

'I am glad to see you, Joe. Give me your hat.'

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 211

But Joe, taking it up carefully with both hands, like a bird's-
nest with eggs in it, wouldn't hear of parting with that piece of
property, and persisted in standing talking over it in a most un-
comfortable way.

'Which you have that growed,' said Joe, 'and that swelled, and
that gentle-f olked' ; Joe considered a little before he discovered
this word; 'as to be sure you are a honour to your king and
country.'

'And you, Joe, look wonderfully well.'

'Thank God,' said Joe, 'I'm ekerval to most. And your sister,
she's no worse than she were. And Biddy, she's ever right and
ready. And all friends is no backerder, if not no forarder. 'Ceptin'
Wopsle: he's had a drop.'

All this time (still with both hands taking great care of the
bird's-nest), Joe was rolling his eyes round and round the room,
and round and round the flowered pattern of my dressing-gown.
. 'Had a drop, Joe?'

'Why, yes,' said Joe, lowering his voice, 'he's left the Church and
went into the playacting. Which the playacting have likewise
brought him to London along with me. And his wish were,' said
Joe, getting the bird's-nest under his left arm for the moment, and
groping in it for an egg with his right; 'if no offence, as I would
'and you that.'

I took what Joe gave me, and found it to be the crumpled play-
bill of a small metropolitan theatre, announcing the first appear-
ance, in that very week, of 'the celebrated Provincial Amateur of
Roscian renown, whose unique performance in the highest tragic
walk of our National Bard has lately occasioned so great a sensa-
tion in local dramatic circles.'

'Were you at his performance, Joe?' I inquired.

'I were,' said Joe, with emphasis and solemnity.

'Was there a great sensation?'

'Why,' said Joe, 'yes, there certainly were a peck of orange-peel.
Partickler when he see the ghost. Though I put it to yourself, sir,
whether it were calc'lated to keep a man up to his work with a good
hart, to be continiwally cutting in betwixt him and the Ghost with
"Amen!" A man may have had a misfortun' and been in the

212 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

Church,' said Joe, lowering his voice to an argumentative and
feeling tone, *but that is no reason why you should put him out at
such a time. Which I meantersay, if the ghost of a man's own
father cannot be allowed to claim his attention, what can, Sir?
Still more, when his mourning 'at is unfortunately made so small
as that the weight of the black feathers brings it off, try to keep
it on how you may.'

A ghost-seeing effect in Joe's own countenance informed me that
Herbert had entered the room. So, I presented Joe to Herbert,
who held out his hand ; but Joe backed from it, and held on by the
bird's-nest.

'Your servant, Sir,' said Joe, 'which I hope as you and Pip' —
here his eye fell on the Avenger, who was putting some toast on
table, and so plainly denoted an intention to make that young gen-
tleman one of the family, that I frowned it down and confused him
more — 'I meantersay, you two gentlemen — which I hope as you
get your elths in this close spot? For the present may be a wery
good inn, according to London opinions,' said Joe, confidentially,
*and I believe its character do stand i; but I wouldn't keep a pig in
it myself — not in the case that I wished him to fatten wholesome
and to eat with a meller flavour on him.'

Having borne this flattering testimony to the merits of our dwell-
ing-place, and having incidentally shown this tendency to call me
'sir,' Joe, being invited to sit down to table, looked all round the
room for a suitable spot on which to deposit his hat — as if it were
only on some few very rare substances in nature that it could find a
resting-place — and ultimately stood it on an extreme corner of the
chimney-piece, from which it ever afterwards fell off at intervals.

'Do you take tea, or coffee, Mr. Gargery?' asked Herbert, who
always presided of a morning.

'Thankee, Sir,' said Joe, stiff from head to foot, 'I'll take which-
ever is most agreeable to yourself.'

'What do you say to coffee?'

'Thankee, Sir,' returned Joe, evidently dispirited by the pro-
posal, 'since you are so kind as make chice of coffee, I will not run
contrairy to your own opinions. But don't you never find it a little
'eating?'

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 213

'Say tea, then,' said Herbert, pouring it out.

Here Joe's hat tumbled off the mantel-piece, and he started out
of his chair and picked it up, and fitted it to the same exact spot.
As if it were an absolute point of good breeding that it should tum-
ble off again soon.

'When did you come to town, Mr. Gargery?'

'Were it yesterday afternoon?' said Joe, after coughing behind
his hand as if he had had time to catch the whooping-cough since
he came. 'No it were not. Yes it were. Yes. It were yesterday af-
ternoon' (with an appearance of mingled wisdom, relief, and strict
impartiality).

'Have you seen anything of London, yet?^

'Why, yes, Sir,' said Joe, 'me and Wopsle went off straight to
look at the Blacking Ware'us. But we didn't find that it come up
to its likeness in the red bills at the shop doors: which I meanter-
say,' added Joe, in an explanatory manner, 'as it is there drawd
too architectooralooral.'

I really believe Joe would have prolonged this word (mightily
expressive to my mind of some architecture that 1 know) into a
perfect Chorus, but for his attention being providentially attracted
by his hat, which was toppling. Indeed, it demanded from him a
constant attention, and a quickness of eye and hand, very like that
exacted by wicket-keeping. He made extraordinary play with it,
and showed the greatest skill; now, rushing at it and catching it
neatly as it dropped; now, merely stopping it midway, beating it
up, and humouring it in various parts of the room and against a
good deal of the pattern of the paper on the wall, before he felt it
safe to close with it ; finally splashing it into the slop-basin, where
I took the liberty of laying hands upon it.

As to his shirt-collar, and his coat-collar, they were perplexing
to reflect upon — insoluble mysteries both. Why should a man
scrape himself to that extent, before he could consider himself full
dressed? Why should he suppose it necessary to be purified by suf-
fering for his holiday clothes? Then he fell into such unaccount-
able fits of meditation, with his fork midway between his plate and
his mouth; had his eyes attracted in such strange directions; was
afflicted with such remarkable coughs; sat so far from the table,

214 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

and dropped so much more than he ate, and pretended that he
hadn't dropped it; that I was heartily glad when Herbert left us
for the city.

I had neither the good sense nor the good feeling to know that
this was all my fault, and that if I had been easier with Joe, Joe
would have been easier with me. I felt impatient of him and out
of temper with him ; in which condition he heaped coals of fire on
my head.

'Us two being now alone, Sir' — began Joe.

'Joe,' I interrupted, pettishly, 'how can you call me Sir?'

Joe looked at me for a single instant with something faintly like
reproach. Utterly preposterous as his cravat was, and as his col-
lars were, I was conscious of a sort of dignity in the look.

'Us two being now alone,' resumed Joe, 'and me having the in-
tentions and abilities to stay not many minutes more, I will now
conclude — leastways begin — to mention what have led to my hav-
ing had the present honour. For was it not,' said Joe, with his old
air of lucid exposition, 'that my only wish were to be useful to you,
I should not have had the honour of breaking wittles in the com-
pany and abode of gentlemen.'

I was so unwilling to see the look again, that I made no remon-
strance against his tone.

'Well, Sir,' pursued Joe, 'this is how it were. I were at the
Bargemen t'other night, Pip'; whenever he subsided into affection,
he called me Pip, and whenever he relapsed into politeness he
called me Sir; 'when there come up in his shay-cart Pumblechook.
Which that same identical,' said Joe, going down a new track, 'do
comb my 'air the wrong way sometimes, awful, by giving out up
and down town as it were him which ever had your infant com-
panionation and were looked upon as a playfellow by yourself.'

'Nonsense. It was you, Joe.'

'Which I fully believed it were, Pip,' said Joe, slightly tossing
his head, 'though it signify little now, Sir. Well, Pip; this same
identical, which his manners is given to blusterous, come to me at
the Bargemen (wot a pipe and a pint of beer do give refreshment
to the working-man, Sir, and do not over stimulate), and his word
were, "Joseph, Miss Havisham she wish to speak to you." '

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 215

'Miss Havisham, Joe?'

' ''She wished," were Pumblechook's word, "to speak to you." '
Joe sat and rolled his eyes at the ceiling.

'Yes, Joe? Go on, please.'

'Next day, Sir,' said Joe, looking at me as if I were a long way
off, 'having cleaned myself, I go and I see Miss A.'

'Miss A., Joe? Miss Havisham?'

'Which I say, Sir,' replied Joe, with an air of legal formality, as
if he were making his will, 'Miss A., or otherwise Havisham. Her
expression air then as follering: "Mr. Gargery. You air in corres-
pondence with Mr. Pip?" Having had a letter from you, I were
able to say "I am." (When I married your sister, Sir, I said "I
will"; and when I answered your friend, Pip, I said, "I am.")
"Would you tell him, then," said she, "that which Estella has come
home, and would be glad to see him." '

I felt my face fire up as I looked at Joe. I hope one remote cause
of its firing, may have been my consciousness that if I had known
his errand, I should have given him more encouragement.

'Biddy,' pursued Joe, 'when I got home and asked her fur to
write the message to you, a little hung back. Biddy says, "I know
he will be very glad to have it by word of mouth, it is holiday-
time, you want to see him, go!" I have now concluded. Sir,' said
Joe, rising from his chair, 'and, Pip, I wish you ever well and ever
prospering to a greater and greater height.'

'But you are not going now, Joe?'

'Yes I am,' said Joe.

'But you are coming back to dinner, Joe?'

'No I am not,' said Joe.

Our eyes met, and all the 'Sir' melted out of that manly heart
as he gave me his hand.

'Pip, dear old chap, life is made of ever so many partings weld-
ed together, as I may say, and one man's a blacksmith, and one's
a whitesmith, and one's a goldsmith, and one's a coppersmith.
Diwisions among such must come, and must be met as they come.
If there's been any fault at all to-day, it's mine. You and me is not
two figures to be together in London ; nor yet anywheres else but
what is private, and beknown, and understood among' friends. It

216 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

ain't that I am proud, but that I want to be right, as you shall
never see me no more in these clothes. I'm wrong in these clothes.
I'm wrong out of the forge, the kitchen, or off th' meshes. You
won't find half so much fault in me if you think of me in my forge
dress, with my hammer in my hand, or even my pipe. You won't
find half so much fault in me 'f, supposing as you should ever wish
to see me, you come and put your head in at the forge window and
see Joe the blacksmith, there, at the old anvil, in the old burnt
apron, sticking to the old work. I'm awful dull, but I hope I've
beat out something nigh the rights of this at last. And so God
bless you, dear old Pip, old chap, God bless you! '

I had not been mistaken in my fancy that there was a simple
dignity in him. The fashion of his dress could no more come in its
way when he spoke these words, than it could come in its way in
Heaven. He touched me gently on the forehead, and went out. As
soon as I could recover myself sufficiently, I hurried out after him
and looked for him in the neighbouring streets; but he was gone.

CHAPTER XXVIII

It was clear that I must repair to our town next day, and in the
first flow of my repentance it was equally clear that I must stay
at Joe's. But, when I had secured my box-place by to-morrow's
coach, and had been down to Mr. Pocket's and back, I was not by
any means convinced on the last point, and began to invent reasons
and make excuses for putting up at the Blue Boar. I should be an
inconvenience at Joe's; I was not expected, and my bed would not
be ready; I should be too far from Miss Havisham's, and she was
exacting and mightn't like it. All other swindlers upon earth are
nothing to the self-swindlers, and with such pretences did I cheat
myself. Surely a curious thing. That I should innocently take a
bad half-crown of somebody else's manufacture, is reasonable
enough; but that I should knowingly reckon the spurious coin of
my own make, as good money! An obliging stranger, under pre-
tence of compactly folding up my banknotes for security's sake,
abstracts the notes and gives me nutshells; but what is his sleight

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 217

of hand to mine, when I fold up my own nutshells and pass them
on myself as notes!

Having settled that I must go to the Blue Boar, my mind was
much disturbed by indecision whether or no to take the Avenger.
It was tempting to think of that expensive Mercenary publicly
airing his boots in the archway of the Blue Boar's posting-yard:
it was almost solemn to imagine him casually produced in the
tailor's shop and confounding the disrespectful senses of Trabb's
boy. On the other hand, Trabb's boy might worm himself into his
intimacy and tell him things; or, reckless and desperate wretch as
I knew he could be, might hoot him in the High Street. My patron-
ess, too, might hear of him, and not approve. On the whole, I re-
solved to leave the Avenger behind.

It was the afternoon coach by which I had taken my place, and,
as winter had now come round, I should not arrive at my destina-
tion until tv/o or three hours after dark. Our time of starting from
the Cross Keys was two o'clock. I arrived on the ground with a
quarter of an hour to spare, attended by the Avenger — if I may
connect that expression with one who never attended on me if he
could possibly help it.

At that time it was customary to carry Convicts down to the
dockyards by stage-coach. As I had often heard of them in the
capacity of outside passengers, and had more than once seen them
on the high road dangling their ironed legs over the coach roof, I
had no cause to be surprised when Herbert, meeting me in the
yard, came up and told me there were two convicts going down
with me. But I had a reason that was an old reason now, for con-
stitutionally faltering whenever I heard the word convict.

'You don't mind them, Handel?' said Herbert.

'Oh no!'

'I thought you seemed as if you didn't like them?'

'I can't pretend that I do like them,, and I suppose you don't
particularly. But I don't mind them.'

'See! There they are,' said Herbert, 'coming out of the Tap.
What a degraded and vile sight it is!'

They had been treating their guard, I suppose, for they had a
gaoler with them, and all three came out wiping their mouths on

218 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

their hands. The two convicts were handcuffed together, and had
irons on their legs — irons of a pattern that I knew well. They
wore the dress that I likewise knew well. Their keeper had a brace
of pistols, and carried a thick-knobbed bludgeon under his arm;
but he was on terms of good understanding with them, and stood,
with them beside him, looking on at the putting-to of the horses,
rather with an air as if the convicts were an interesting Exhibi-
tion not formally open at the moment, and he the Curator. One
was a taller and stouter man than the other, and appeared as a
matter of course, according to the mysterious ways of the world
both convict and free, to have had allotted to him the smaller suit
of clothes. His arms and legs were like great pincushions of those
shapes, and his attire disguised him absurdly; but I knew his half-
closed eye at one glance. There stood the man whom I had seen on
the settle at the Three Jolly Bargemen on a Saturday night, and
who had brought me down with his invisible gun!

It was easy to make sure that as yet he knew me no more than
if he had never seen me in his life. He looked across at me, and his
eye appraised my watch-chain, and then he incidentally spat and
said something to the other convict, and they laughed and slued
themselves round with a clink of their coupling manacle, and
looked at something else. The great numbers on their backs, as if
they were street doors; their coarse mangy ungainly outer surface,
as if they were lower animals; their ironed legs, apologetically
garlanded with pocket-handkerchiefs; and the way in which all
present looked at them and kept from them; made them (as Her-
bert had said) a most disagreeable and degraded spectacle.

But this was not the worst of it. It came out that the whole of
the back of the coach had been taken by a family removing from
London, and that there were no places for the two prisoners but
on the seat in front, behind the coachman. Hereupon, a choleric
gentleman, who had taken the fourth place on that seat, flew into
a most violent passion, and said that it was a breach of contract
to mix him up with such villainous company, and that it was pois-
onous and pernicious and infamous and shameful, and I don't
know what else. At this time the coach was ready and the coach-
man impatient, and we were all preparing to get up, and the pris-

i

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 219

oners had come over with their" keeper — bringing with them that
curious flavour of bread-poultice, baize, rope-yarn, and hearth-
stone, which attends the convict presence.

'Don't take it so much amiss, sir,' pleaded the keeper to the
angry passenger; 'I'll sit next you myself. I'll put 'em on the out-
side of the row. They won't interfere with you, sir. You needn't
know they're there.'

'And don't blame me,' growled the convict I had recognised. '/
don't want to go. / am quite ready to stay behind. As fur as I am
concerned any one's welcome to my place.'

'Or mine,' said the other, gruffly. '/ wouldn't have incommoded
none of you, if I'd had my way.' Then, they both laughed, and
began cracking nuts, and spitting the shells about. — As I really
think I should have liked to do myself, if I had been in their place
and so despised.

At length, it was voted that there was no help for the angry
gentleman, and that he must either go in his chance company or
remain behind. So, he got into his place, still making complaints,
and the keeper got into the place next him, and the convicts hauled
themselves up as well as they could, and the convict I had recog-
nised sat behind me with his breath on the hair of my head.

'Good-bye, Handel!' Herbert called out as we started. I thought
what a blessed fortune it was, that he had found another name
for me than Pip.

It is. impossible to express with what acuteness I felt the con-
vict's breathing, not only on the back of my head, but all along
my spine. The sensation was like being touched in the marrow
with some pungent and searching acid, and it set my very teeth
on edge. He seemed to have more breathing business to do than
another man, and to make more noise in doing it ; and I was con-
scious of growing high-shouldered on one side, in my shrinking
endeavours to fend him off.

The weather was miserably raw, and the two cursed the cold.
It made us all lethargic before we had gone far, and when we had
left the Half-way House behind, we habitually dozed and shivered
and were silent. I dozed off, myself, in considering the question
whether I ought to restore a couple of pounds sterling to this crea-

220 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

ture before losing sight of him, and how it could best be done. In
the act of dipping forward as if I were going to bathe among the
horses, I woke in a fright and took the question up again.

But I must have lost it longer than I had thought, since, al-
though I could recognise nothing in the darkness and the fitful
lights and shadows of our lamps, I traced marsh country in the
cold damp wind that blew at us. Cowering forward for warmth
and to make me a screen against the wind, the convicts were closer
to me than before. The very first words I heard them interchange
as I became conscious, were the words of my own thought, *Two
One Pound notes.'

'How did he get 'em?' said the convict I had never seen.

'How should I know?' returned the other. 'He had 'em stowed
away somehows. Giv' him by friends, I expect.'

'I wish,' said the other, with a bitter curse upon the cold, 'that
I had 'em here.

'Two one pound notes, or friends?'

'Two one pound notes. I'd sell all the friends I ever had, for one,
and think it a blessed good bargain. Well? So he says — ?'

'So he says,' resumed the convict I had recognised — 'it was all
said and done in half a minute, behind a pile of timber in the Dock-
yard— "You're a-going to be discharged!" Yes, I was. Would I
find out that boy that had fed him and kep his secret, and give
him them two one pound notes? Yes I would. And I did.'

'More fool you,' growled the other. 'I'd have spent 'em on a
Man, in wittles and drink. He must have been a green one. Mean
to say he knowed nothng of you?'

'Not a ha'porth. Different gangs and different ships. He was
tried again for prison breaking, and got made a Lifer.'

'And was that — Honour! — the only time you worked out, in this
part of the country?'

'The only time.'

'What might have be?n your opinion of the place?'

'A most beastly plac^. Mudbank, mist, swamp, and work: work,
swamp, mist, and mudbank.'

They both execrated the place m very strong language, and

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 221

gradually growled themselves out, and had nothing left to say.

After overhearing this dialogue, I should assuredly have got
down and been left in the solitude and darkness of the highway,
but for feeling certain that the man had no suspicion of my iden-
tity. Indeed, I was not only so changed in the course of nature,
but so differently dressed and so differently circumstanced, that it
was not at all likely he could have known me without accidental
help. Still, the coincidence of our being together on the coach,
was sufficiently strange to fill me with a dread that some other co-
incidence might at any moment connect me, in his hearing, with
my nam.e. For this reason, I resolved to alight as soon as we
touched the town, and put myself out of his hearing. This device
I executed successfully. My little portmaneau was in the boot
under my feet ; I had but to turn a hinge to get it out ; I threw it
down before me, got down after it, and was left at the first lamp
on the first stones of the town pavement. As to the convicts, they
went their way with the coach, and I knew at what point they
would be spirited! off to the river. In my fancy, I saw the boat
with its convict crew waiting for them at the sHme-washed stairs,
— again heard the gruff 'Give way, you!' like an order to dogs —
again saw the wicked Noah's Ark lying out on the black water.

I could not have said what I was afraid of, for my tear was al-
together undefined and vague, but there was a great fear upon me.
As I walked on to the hotel, I felt that a dread, much exceeding
the mere apprehension of a painful or disagreeable recognition,
made me tremble. I am confident that it took no distinctness of
shape, and that it was the revival for a few minutes ot the terror
of childhood.

The coffee-room at the Blue Boar was empty, and I had not
only ordered my dinner there, but had sat down to it, before
the waiter knew me. As soon as he had apologised for the remiss-
ness of his memory, he asked me if he should send Boots for Mr.
Pumblechook?

*No,' said I, 'certainly not.'

The waiter (it was he who had brought up the Great Remon-
strance from the Commercials on the day when I was bound)

222 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

appeared surprised, and took the earliest opportunity of putting
a dirty copy of a local newspaper so directly in my way, that I
took it up and read this paragraph:

'Our readers will learn, not altogether without interest, in
reference to the recent romantic rise in fortune of a young artificer
in iron of this neighbourhood (what a theme, by the way, for
the magic pen of our as yet not universally acknowledged towns-
man, TooBY, the poet of our columns!) that the youth's earliest
patron, companion, and friend, was a highly-respected individual
not entirely unconnected with the corn and seed trade, and whose
eminently convenient and commodious business premises are sit-
uate within a hundred miles of the High Street. It is not wholly
irrespective of our personal feelings that we record Him as the
^lentor of our young Telemachus, for it is good to know that our
town produced the founder of the latter's fortunes. Does the
thought-contracted brow of the local Sage or the lustrous eye
of local Beauty inquire whose fortunes? We believe that Quin-
tin Matsys was the Bl.acksmith of Antwerp. Verb. Sap.'

I entertain a conviction, based upon large experience, that if
in the days of my prosperity I had gone to the North Pole, I
should have met somebody there, wandering Esquimaux or civilised
man, who would have told me that Pumblechook was my earliest
patron and the founder of my fortunes.

CHAPTER XXIX

Betimes in the morning I was up and out. It was too early yet
to go to Miss Havisham's, so I loitered into the country on Miss
Havisham's side ©f town — which was not Joe's side; I could go
there to-morrow — thinking about my patroness, and painting
brilliant pictures of her plans for me.

She had adopted Estella, she had as good as adopted me, and
it could not fail to be her intention to bring us together. She
reserved it for me to restore the desolate house, admit the sun-

J

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 228

shine into the dark rooms, set the clocks a-going and the cold
hearths a blazing, tear down the cobwebs, destroy the vermin — •
in short, do all the shining deeds of the young Knight of romance,
and marry the Princess. I had stopped to look at the house as I
passed; and its seared red brick walls, blocked windows, and
strong green ivy clasping even the stacks of chimneys with its
twigs and tendons, as if with sinewy old arms, had made up a rich
attractive mystery, of which I was the hero. Estella was the in-
spiration of it, and the heart of it, of course. But, though she
had taken such strong possession of me, though my fancy and my
hope were so set upon her, though her influence on my boyish life
and character had been all-powerful, I did not, even that romantic
morning, invest her with any attributes save those she possessed.
I mention this in this place, of a fixed purpose, because it is the
clue by which I am to be followed into my poor labyrinth. Ac-
cording to my experience, the conventional notion of a lover can-
not be always true. The unqualified truth is, that when I loved
Estella with the love of a man, I loved her simply because I found
her irresistible. Once for all; I knew to my sorrow, often and
often, if not always, that I loved her against reason, against prom-
ise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all dis-
couragement that could be. Once for all; I loved her none the less
because I knew it, and it had no more influence in restraining me,
than if I had devoutly believed her to be human perfection.

I so shaped out my walk as to arrive at the gate my old time.
When I had rung at the bell with an unsteady hand, I turned my
back upon the gate, while I tried to get my breath and keep the
beating of my heart moderately quiet. I heard the side door open,
and steps come across the court-yard ; but I pretended not to hear,
even when the gate swung on its rusty hinges.

Being at last touched upon the shoulder, I started and turned. I
started much more naturally then, to find myself confronted by
a man in a sober grey dress. The last man I should have ex-
pected to see in that place of porter at Miss Havisham's door.

'Orlick!'

*Ah, young master, there's more changes than yours. But con^
in, come in. It's opposed to my orders to hold the gate open.*

224 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

I entered and he swung it, and locked it, and took the key
out. 'Yes I' said he, facing round, after doggedly preceding me a
few steps towards the house. 'Here I am!'

'How did you come here?'

'I come here,' he retorted, 'on my legs. I had my box brought
alongside me in a barrow.'

'Are you here for good?'

'I ain't here for harm, young master, I suppose.'

I was not so sure of that. I had leisure to entertain the retort
in my mind, while he slowly lifted his heavy glance from the pave-
ment, up my legs and arms to my face.

'Then you have left the forge?' I said.

'Do this look like a forge?' replied Orlick, sending his glance
all round him with an air of injury. 'Now, do it look like it?'

I asked him how long he had left Gargery's forge?

'One day is so like another here,' he replied, 'that I don't know
without casting it up. However, I come her some time since you
left.'

'I could have told you that, Orlick.'

'Ah!' said he, drily. 'But then you've got to be a scholar.^

By this time we had come to the house, where I found his room
to be one just within the side door, with a little window in it look-
ing on the court-yard. In its small proportions, it was not un-
like the kind of place usually assigned to a gate-porter in Paris.
Certain keys were hanging on the wall, to which he now added the
gate-key; and his patchwork-covered bed was in a little inner
division or recess. The whole had a slovenly, confined and sleepy
look, like a cage for a human dormouse: vrhile he, looming dark
and heavy in the shadow of a corner by the window, looked like
the human dormouse for whom it was fitted up — as indeed he was.

'I never saw this room before,' I remarked; 'but there used
to be no Porter here.'

'No/ said he: 'not till it got about that there was no protection
on the premises, and it come to be considered dangerous, with
convicts and Tag and Rag and Bobtail going up and down. And
then I was recommended to the place as a man who could give
another man as good as he brought, and I took it. It's easier

J

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 225

than bellowsing and hammering. — That's loaded, that is/

My eye had been caught by a gun with a brass-bound stock over
the chimney-piece, and his eye had followed mine.

Well,' said I, not desirous of more conversation, 'shall I go up
to Miss Havisham?'

^Burn me, if I know!' he retorted, first stretching himself and
then shaking himself; 'my orders end here, young master. I
give this here bell a rap with this here hammer, and you go on
along the passage till you meet somebody.'

'I am expected, I believe?'

^Burn me twice over, if I can say!' said he.

Upon that I turned down the long passage which I had first
trodden in my thick boots, and he made his bell sound. At the
end of the passage, while the bell was still reverberating, I found
Sarah Pocket: who appeared to have now become constitutionally
green and yellow by reason of me.

'Oh!' said she. 'You is it, Mr. Pip?'

'It is, Miss Pocket. I am glad to tell you that Mr. Pocket and
family are all well.'

'Are they any wiser?' said Sarah, with a dismal shake of the
head; 'they had better be wiser than well. Ah, Matthew, Mat-
thew! You know your way, sir?'

Tolerably, for I had gone up the staircase in the dark, many
a time. I ascended it now, in lighter boots than of yore, and
tapped in my old way at the door of Miss Havisham's room.
'Pip's rap,' I heard her say, immediately; 'come in, Pip.'

She was in her chair near the old table, in the old dress, with
her two hands crossed on her stick, her chin resting on them, and
her eyes on the fire. Sitting near her, with the white shoe, that
had never been worn, in her hand, and her head bent as she
looked at it, was an elegant lady whom I had never seen.

'Come in, Pip,' Miss Havisham continued to mutter, without
looking round or up; 'come in, Pip; how do you do, Pip? so you
kiss my hand as if I were a queen, eh? — Well?'

She looked up at me suddenly, only moving her eyes, and re-
peated in a grimly playful manner.

'Well?'

226 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

'I heard, Miss Havisham,' said I, rather at a loss, 'that you
were so kind as to wish me to come and see you, and I came
directly.'

Well?'

The lady whom I had never seen before, lifted up her eyes
and looked archly at me, and then I saw that the eyes were
Estella's eyes. But she was so much changed, was so much
more beautiful, so much more womanly, in all things winning
admiration had made such wonderful advance, that I seemed to
have made none. I fancied, as I looked at her, that I slipped
hopelessly back into the coarse and common boy again. O the
sense of distance and disparity that came upon me, and the
inaccessibility that came about her!

She gave me her hand. I stammered something about the
pleasure I felt in seeing her again, and about my having looked
forward to it for a long, long time.

'Do you find her much changed, Pip?' asked Miss Havisham,
with her greedy look, and striking her stick upon a chair that
stood between them, as a sign to me to sit down there.

When I came in. Miss Havisham, I thought there was nothing
of Estella in the face or figure; but now it all settles down so
curiously into the old — '

What? You are not going to say into the old Estella?' Miss
Havisham interrupted. 'She was proud and insulting, and you
wanted to go away from her. Don't you remember?'

I said confusedly that that was long ago, and that I knew no
better then, and the like. Estella smiled with perfect composure,
and said she had no doubt of my having been quite right, and
of her having been very disagreeable.

'Is he changed?' Miss Havisham asked her.

'Very much,' said Estella, looking at me.

'Less coarse and common?' said Miss Havisham, playing with
Estella's hair.

Estella laughed, and looked at the shoe in her hand, and laughed
again and looked at me, and put the shoe down. She treated me
as a boy still, but she lured me on.

We sate in the dreamy room among the old strange influences

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 227

which had so wrought upon me, and I learnt that she had but
just come home from France, and that she was going to London.
Proud and wilful as of old, she had brought those qualities
into such subjection to her beauty that it was impossible and
out of nature — or I thought so — to separate them from her
beauty. Truly it was impossible to dissociate her presence from all
those wretched hankerings after money and gentility that had
disturbed my boyhood — from all those ill-regulated aspirations
that had first made me ashamed of home and Joe — from all those
visions that had raised her face in the glowing fire, struck it out
of the iron on the anvil, extracted it from the darkness of night
to look in at the wooden window of the forge and flit away. In
a word, it was impossible for me to separate her, in the past or in
the present, from the innermost life of my life.

It was settled that I should stay there all the rest of the day,
and return to the hotel at night, and to London to-morrow. When
we had conversed for a while. Miss Havisham sent us two out
to walk in the neglected garden: on our coming in by and by,
she said I should wheel her about a little, as in times of yore.

So Estella and I went out into the garden by the gate through
which I had strayed to my encounter with the pale young gentle-
man, now Herbert; I, trembling in spirit and worshipping the
very hem of her dress; she, quite composed and most decidedly
not worshipping the hem of mine. As we drew near to the place
of encounter, she stopped and said:

'I must have been a singular little creature to hide and see
that fight that day: but I did, and I enjoyed it very much.'

^You rewarded me very much.'

'Did I?' she replied, in an incidental and forgetful way. 'I re-
member I entertained a great objection to your adversary, be-
cause I took it ill that he should be brought here to pester me
with his company.'

'He and I are great friends now.'

'Are you? I think I recollect though, that you read with his
father?'

'Yes.'

I made the admission with reluctance, for it seemed to have

228 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

a boyish look, and she already treated me more than enough like
a boy.

'Since your change of fortune and prospects, you have changed
your companions,' said Estella.

'Naturally,' said I.

'And necessarily,' she added, in a haughty tone; 'what was fit
company for you once, would be quite unfit company for you now/

In my conscience, I doubt very much whether I had any linger-
ing intention left of going to see Joe; but if 1 had, this observation
put it to flight.

'You had no idea of your impending good fortune, in those
times?' said Estella, with a slight wave of her hand, signifying
the fighting times.

'Not the least.'

The air of completeness and superiority with which she walked
at my side, and the air of youthfulness and submission with
which I walked at hers, made a contrast that I strongly felt. It
would have rankled in me more than it did, if I had not regarded
myself as eliciting it by being so set apart for her and assigned
to her.

The garden was too overgrown and rank for walking in with
ease, and after we had made the round of it twice or thrice, we
came out agam into the brewery yard. I showed her to a nicety
where I had seen her walking on the casks, that first old day, and
she said with a cold and careless look in that direction, 'Did I?'
I reminded her where she had come out of the house and given
me my meat and drink, and she said, 'I don't remember.' 'Not
remember that you made me cry?' said I. 'No,' said she, and
shook her head and looked about her. I verily believe that her not
remembering and not minding in the least, made me cry again,
inwardly — and that is the sharpest crying of all.

'You must know,' said Estella, condescending to me as a
brilliant and beautiful woman might, 'that I have no heart — if
that has anything to do with my memory.'

I got through some jargon to the effect that I took the liberty
of doubting that. That I knew better. That there could be no
such beauty without it.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 229

'Oh! I have a heart to be stabbed in or shot in, I have no doubt/
said Estella, 'and, of course, if it ceased to beat I should cease to
be. But you know what I mean. I have no softness there, no —
sympathy — sentiment — nonsense.'

What was it that was borne in upon my mind when she stood
still and looked attentively at me? Anything that I had seen in
Miss Havisham? No. In some of her looks and gestures there
was that tinge of the resemblance to Miss Havisham which may
often be noticed to have been acquired by children, from grown
persons with whom they have been much associated and seclu-
ded, and which, when childhood is passed, will pro'^uce a remark-
able occasional likeness of expression between faces that are
otherwise quite different. And yet I could not trace this to Miss
Havisham. I looked again, and though she was still looking at
me, the suggestion was gone.

What was it?

'I am serious,' said Estella, not so much with a frown (for her
brow was smooth) as with a darkening of her face; 'if we are
to be thrown much together, you had better believe it at once.
No!' imperiously stopping me as I opened my lips. 'I have not
bestowed my tenderness anywhere. I have never had any such
thing.'

In another moment we were in the brewery so long disused,
and she pointed to the high gallery where I had seen her going out
on that same first day, and told me she remembered to have been
up there, and to have seen me standing scared below. As my
eyes followed her white hand, again the same dim suggestion
that I could not possibly grasp, crossed me. My involuntary start
occasioned her to lay her hand upon my arm. Instantly the ghost
passed once more and was gone.

What was it?

'What is the matter?' asked Estella. 'Are you scared again?'

'I should be if I believed what you said just now.' I replied, to
turn it off.

'Then you don't? Very well. It is said, at any rate. Miss
Havisham will soon be expecting you at your old post, though
I think that might be laid aside now, with other old belongings

230 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

Let us make one round of the garden, and then go in. Come! You
shall not shed tears for my cruelty to-day; you shall be my
Page, and give me your shoulder.'

Her handsome dress had trailed upon the ground. She held it
in one hand now, and with the other lightly touched my shoulder
as we walked. We walked round the ruined garden twice or
thrice more, and it was all in bloom for me. If the green and
yellow growth of weed in the chinks of the old wall had been
the most precious flowers that ever blew, it could not have been
more cherished in my remembrance.

There was no discrepancy of years between us, to remove her
far from me ; we were of nearly the same age, though of course the
age told for more in her case than in mine; but the air of in-
accessibility which her beauty and her manner gave her, tormented
me in the midst of my delight, and at the height of the assurance
I felt that our patroness had chosen us for one another. Wretched
boy!

At last we went back into the house, and there I heard, with sur-
prise, that my guardian had come down to see Miss Havisham
on business, and would come back to dinner. The old wintry
branches of chandeliers in the room where the mouldering table
was spread, had been lighted while we were out, and Miss Havi-
sham was in her chair and waiting for me.

It was like pushing the chair itself back into the past, when we
began the old slow round about the ashes of the bridal feast.
But, in the funereal room, with that figure of the grave
fallen back in the chair fixing its eyes upon her, Estella looked
more bright and beautiful than before, and I was under stronger
enchantment.

The time so melted away, that our early dinner-hour drew close
at hand, and Estella left us to prepare herself. We had stopped
near the centre of the long table, and Miss Havisham, with one of
her withered arms stretched out of the chair, rested that clenched
hand upon the yellow cloth. As Estella looked back over her
shoulder before going out at the door. Miss Havisham kissed
that hand to her, with a ravenous intensity that was of its kind
quite dreadful.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 231

Then, Estella being gone and we two left alone, she turned
to me and said in a whisper:

'Is she beautiful, graceful, well-grown? Do you admire her?'

'Everybody must who sees her, Miss Havisham.'

She drew an arm round my neck, and drew my head close down
to hers as she sat in the chair. 'Love her, love her, love her! How
does she use you?'

Before I could answer (if I could have answered so difficult
a question at all), she repeated, 'Love her, love her, love her! If
she favours you, love her. If she wounds you, love her. If she
tears your heart to pieces — and as it gets older and stronger it
will tear deeper — love her, love her, love her! '

Never had I seen such passionate eagerness as was joined to her
utterance of these words. I could feel the muscles of the thin
arm round my neck, swell with the vehemence that possessed her.

'Hear me, Pip! I adopted her to be loved. I bred her and edu-
cated her, to be loved. I developed her into what she is, that she
might be loved. Love her!'

She said the word often enough, and there could be no doubt
that she meant to say it; but if the often repeated word had been
hate instead of love — despair — revenge — dire death — it could not
I have sounded from her lips more like a curse.

'I'll tell you,' said she, in the same hurried passionate whisper,
Vhat real love is. It is blind devotion, unquestioning self-humili-
ation, utter submission, trust and belief against yourself and
against the whole world, giving up your whole heart and soul to
the smiter — as I did ! '

When she came to that, and to a wild cry that followed that,
I caught her round the waist. For she rose up in the chair, in her
shroud of a dress, and struck at the air as if she would as soon
have struck herself against the wall and fallen dead.

All this passed in a few seconds. As I drew her down into her
chair, I was conscious of a scent that I knew, and turning, sav«
my guardian in the room.

He always carried (I have not yet mentioned it, I think) a

^^pocket-handkerchief of rich silk and of imposing proportions,

which was of great value to him in his profession. I have seen

232 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

him so terrify a client or a witness by ceremoniously unfolding
this pocket-handkerchief as if he were immediately going to blow
his nose, and then pausing, as if he knew he should not have
time to do it, before such client or witness committed himself, that
the self-committal has followed directly, quite as a matter of course.
When I saw him in the room he had this expressive pocket-hand-
kerchief in both hands, and was looking at us. On meeting my eye
he said plainly, by a momentary and silent pause in that attitude,
'Indeed? Singular!' and then put the handkerchief to its right
use with wonderful effect.

Miss Havisham had seen him as soon as I, and was (like every-
body else) afraid of him. She made a strong attempt to compose
herself, and stammered that he was as punctual as ever.

'As punctual as ever,' he repeated, coming up to us. '(How
do you do, Pip? Shall I give you a ride, Miss Havisham? Once
round?) And so you are here, Pip?'

I told him when I had arrived, and how Miss Havisham wished
me to come and see Estella. To which he replied, 'Ah! Very
fine 3"0ung lady!' Then he pushed Miss Havisham in her chair
before him, with one of his large hands, and put the other in his
trousers pocket as if the pocket were full of secrets.

'Well, Pip! How often have you seen Miss Estella before?'
said he, when he came to a stop.

'How often?'

Ah! How many times? Ten thousand times?'

'Oh! Certainly not so many.'

'Twice?'

'Jaggers/ interposed Miss Havisham, much to my relief; 'leave
my Pip alone, and go with him to your dinner.'

He complied, and we groped our way down the dark stairs
together. While we were still on our way to those detached
apartments across the paved yard at the back, he asked me how
often I had seen Miss Havisham eat and drink; offering me a
breadth of choice, as usual, between a hundred times and once.

I considered, and said, 'Never.'

'And never will, Pip,' he retorted, with a frowning smile. 'She
has never allowed herself to be seen doing either, since she lived

I

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 233

this present life of hers. She wanders about in the night, and
then lays hands on such food as she takes.'

Tray, sir,' said I, ^may I ask you a question?'

'You may,' said he, 'and I may decline to answer it. Put your
question.'

'Estella's name, is it Havisham or — ?' I had nothing to add.

'Or what?' said he.

'Is it Havisham?'

'It is Havisham.'

This brought us to the dinner-table, where she and Sarah Pocket
awaited us. Mr. Jaggers presided, Estella sat opposite to him, I
faced my green and yellow friend. We dined very well, and were
waited on by a maid-servant whom I had never seen in all my
comings and goings, but who, for anything I know, had been
in that mysterious house the whole time. After dinner a bottle
of choice old port was placed before my guardian (he was evi-
dently well acquainted with the vintage), and the two ladies left
us.

Anything to equal the determined reticence of Mr. Jaggers under
that roof I never saw elsewhere, even in him. He kept his very
looks to himself, and scarcely directed his eyes to Estella's face
once during dinner. When she spoke to him, he listened, and in
due course, answered, but never looked at her that I could see.
On the other hand, she often looked at him, with interest and
curiosity, if not distrust, but his face never showed the least
consciousness. Throughout dinner he took a dry delight in making
Sarah Pocket greener and yellower, by often referring in conversa-
tion with me to my expectations: but here, again, he showed
no consciousness, and even made it appear that he extorted —
and even did extort, though I don't know how — those references
out of my innocent self.

And when he and I were left alone together, he sat with an
air upon him of general lying by in consquence of information he
possessed, that really was too much for me. He cross-examined his
very wine when he had nothing else in hand. He held it between
himself and the candle, tasted the port, rolled it in his mouth, swal-
lowed it, looked at his glass again, smelt the port, tried it, drank

234 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

it, filled again, and cross-examined the glass again, until I was
as nervous as if I had known the wine to be telling him some-
thing to my disadvantage. Three or four times I feebly thought
I would start conversation; but whenever he saw me going to
ask him anything, he looked at me with his glass in his hand,
and rolling his wine about in his mouth, as if requesting me to
take notice that it was of no use, for he couldn't answer.

I think Miss Pocket was conscious that the sight of me in-
volved her in the danger of being goaded to madness, and per-
haps tearing off her cap — which was a very hideous one, in the
nature of a muslin mop — and strewing the ground with her hair —
which as suredly had never grown on her head. She did not
appear when we afterwards went up to Miss Havisham's room,
and we four played at whist. In the interval. Miss Havisham,
in a fantastic way, had put some of the most beautiful jewels
from her dressing-table into Estella's hair, and about her bosom
and arms; and I saw even my guardian look at her from under
his thick eyebrows, and raise them a little when her loveliness
was before him, with those rich flushes of glitter and colour in it.

Of the manner an extent to which he took our trumps into cus-
tody, and came out with mean little cards at the ends of hands,
before which the glory of our Kings and Queens was utterly abased,
I say nothing; nor, of the feeling that I had, respecting his look-
ing upon us personally in the light of three very obvious and
poor riddles that he had found out long ago. What I suffered
from, was the incompatibility between his cold presence and my
feelings towards Estella. It was not that I knew I could never
bear to speak to him about her, that I knew I could never bear
to hear him creak his boots at her, that I knew I could never
bear to see him wash his hands of her ; it was, that my admiration
should be within a foot or two of him — it was, that my feelings
should be in the same place with him — that, was the agonising
circumstance.

We played until nine o'clock, and then it was arranged that
when Estella came to London I should be forewarned of her
coming and should meet her at the coach; and then I took leave
of her, and touched her and left her.

A Rubber at Miss Havisha

m s

I

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 235

My guardian lay at the Boar in the next room to mine. Far into
the night, Miss Havisham's words, 'Love her, love her, love her I'
sounded in my ears. I adapted them for my own repetition, and
said to my pillow, 'I love her, I love her, I love her!' hundreds of
times. Then, a burst of gratitude came upon me, that she should
be destined for me, once the blacksmith's boy. Then, I thought
if she were, as I feared, by no means rapturously grateful for
that destiny yet, when would she begin to be interested in me?
When should I awaken the heart within her, that was mute and
sleeping now?

Ah me! I thought those were high and great emotions. But
I never thought there was anything low and small in my keeping
away from Joe, because I knew she would be contemptuous of
him. It was but a day gone, and Joe had brought the tears into
my eyes; they had soon dried, God forgive me! soon dried.

CHAPTER XXX

After well considering the matter while I was dressing at the
Blue Boar in the morning, I resolved to tell my guardian that I
doubted Orlick's being the right sort of man to fill a post of trust
at Miss Havisham's. 'Why, of course he is not the right sort
of man, Pip,' said my guardian, comfortably satisfied beforehand
on the general head, 'because the man who fills the post of trust
never is the right sort of man.' It seemed quite to put him in
spirits, to find that this particular post was not exceptionally
held by the right sort of man, and he listened in a satisfied man-
ner while I told him what knowledge I had of Orlick. 'Very
good, Pip,' he observed, when I had concluded. 'I'll go round
presently, and pay our friend off.' Rather alarmed by this sum-
mary action, I was for a little delay, and even hinted that our
friend himself might be difficult to deal with. 'Oh no, he won't,'
said my guardian, making his pocket-handkerchief-point, with
perfect confidence; 'I should like to see him argue the question with
me!

236 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

As we were going back together to London by the mid-day
coach, and as I breakfasted under such terrors of Pumblechook
that I could scarcely hold my cup, this gave me an opportunity
of saying that I wanted a walk, and that I would go on along
the London-road while ]Mr. Jaggers was occupied, if he would
let the coachman know that I would get into my place when over-
taken. I was thus enabled to fly from the Blue Boar immediately
after breakfast. By then making a loop of about a couple of
miles into the open country at the back of Pumblechook's premises,
I got round into the High Street again, a little beyond that pitfall,
and felt myself in comparative security.

It was interesting to be in the quiet old town once more, and
it was not disagreeable to be here and there suddenly recognised
and stared after. One or two of the tradespeople even darted
out of their shops, and went a little way down the street before
me, that they might turn, as if they had forgotten something,
and pass me face to face — on which occasions I don't know
whether they or I made the worse pretence; they of not doing it,
or I of not seeing it. Still my position was a distinguished one,
and I was not at all dissatisfied with it, until Fate threw me in
the way of that unlimited miscreant, Trabb's boy.

Casting my eyes along the street at a certain point of m.y pro-
gress, I beheld Trabb's boy approaching, lashing himself with
an empty blue bag. Deeming that a serene and unconscious
contemplation of him would best beseem me, and would be most
likely to quell his evil mind, I advanced with that expression of
countenance, and was rather congratulating myself on my success,
when suddenly the knees of Trabb's boy smote together, his
hair uprose, his cap fell off, he trembled violently in every limb,
staggered out into the road, and crying to the populace, 'Hold
me! I'm so frightened!' feigned to be in a paroxysm of terror
and contrition, occasioned by the dignity of my appearance. As
I passed him, his teeth loudly chattered in his head, and with every
mark of extreme humiliation, he prostrated himself in the dust.

This was a hard thing to bear, but this was nothing. I had
not advanced another two hundred yards, when, to my inexpress-
ible terror, amazement, and indignation, I again beheld Trabb's

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 237

boy approaching. He was coming round a narrow corner. His blue
bag was slung over his shoulder, honest industry beamed in
his eyes, a determination to proceed to Tr abb's with cheerful
briskness was indicated in his gait. With a shock he became aware
of me, and was severely visited as before ; but this time his motion
was rotatory, and he staggered round and round me with knees
more afflicted, and with uplifted hands as if beseeching for
mercy. His sufferings were hailed with the greatest joy by a
knot of spectators, and I felt utterly confounded.

I had not got as much further down the street as the post-
office, when I again beheld Trabb's boy shooting round by a
back way. This time, he was entirely changed. He wore the
blue bag in the manner of my great-coat, and was strutting along
the pavement towards me on the opposite side of the street,
attended by a company of delighted young friends to whom he
from time to time exclaimed, with a wave of his hand, ^ Don't
know yah!' Words cannot state the amount of aggravation
and injury wreaked upon me by Trabb's boy, when, passing
abreast of me, he pulled up his shirt-collar, twined his side-hair,
struck an arm akimbo, and smirked extravagantly by, wriggling
his elbows and body, and drawling to his attendants, 'Don't
know yah, don't know yah, pon my soul don't know yah!' The
disgrace attendant on his immediately afterwards taking to
crowing and pursuing me across the bridge with crows, as from
an exceedingly dejected fowl who had known me when I was a
blacksmith, culminated the disgrace with which I left the town,
and was, so to speak, ejected by it into the open country.

But unless I had taken the life of Trabb's boy on that occasion,
I really do not even now see what I could have done save endure.
To have struggled with him in the street, or to have exacted
any lower recompense from him than his heart's best blood,
would have been futile and degrading. Moreover, he was a boy
whom no man could hurt; an invulnerable and dodging serpent
who, when chased into a corner, flew out again between his
captor's legs, scornfully yelping. I wrote, however, to Mr. Trabb
by next day's post, to say that Mr. Pip must decline to deal
further with one who could so far forget what he owed to the

238 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

best interests of society, as to employ a boy who excited Loathing
in every respectable mind.

The coach, with Mr. Jaggers inside, came up in due time, and
I took my box-seat again, and arrived in London safe — but not
sound, for my heart was gone. As soon as I arrived, I sent a
pentitentiai codfish and barrel of oysters to Joe (as reparation for
not having gone myself), and then went on to Barnard's Inn.

I found Herbert dining on cold meat, and delighted to welcome
me back. Having despatched the Avenger to the coffee-house for
an addition to the dinner, I felt that I must open my breast that
very evening to my friend and chum. As confidence was out
of the question with the Avenger in the hall, which could merely
be regarded in the light of an ante-chamber to the keyhole, I
sent him to the Play. A better proof of the severity of my bondage
to that taskmaster could scarcely be afforded, than the degrading
shifts to which I was constantly driven to find him employment.
"So mean is extremity, that I sometimes sent him to Hyde Park
Corner to see what o'clock it was.

Dinner done and we sitting with our feet upon the fender, I
said to Herbert, ^My dear Herbert, I have something very par-
ticular to tell you.'

'My dear Handel,' he returned, 'I shall esteem and respect
your confidence.'

'It concerns myself, Herbert,' said I, 'and one other person.'

Herbert crossed his feet, looked at the fire with his head on one
side, and having looked at it in vain for some time, looked at
me because I didn't go on.

'Herbert,' said I, laying my hand upon his knee, 'I love — I adore
— Estella.'

Instead of being transfixed, Herbert replied in an easy matter-
of-course way, 'Exactly. Well?'

'Well, Herbert. Is that all you can say? Well?'

'What next, I mean?' said Herbert. 'Of course I know that.*

'How do you know it?' said I.

'How do I know it, Handel? Why, from you.'

'I never told you.'

'Told me ! You have never told me when you have got your hair

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 239

cut, but I have had senses to perceive it. You have always adored
her, ever since I have known you. You brought your adoration and
your portmanteau here, together. Told me! Why, you may have
always told me all day long. When you told me your own story,
you told me plainly that you began adoring her the first time
you saw her, when you were very young indeed.'

'Very well, then,' said I, to whom this was a new and not un-
welcome light, T have never left off adoring her. And she has
come back a most beautiful and most elegant creature. And I
saw her yesterday. And if I adored her before, I now doubly
adore her.'

'Lucky for you then, Handel,' said Herbert, 'that you are picked
out for her and allotted to her. Without encroaching on forbidden
ground, we may venture to say, that three can be no doubt be-
tween ourselves of that fact. Have you any idea yet, of Estella's
views on the adoration question?'

I shook my head gloomily. 'Oh! She is thousands of miles away,
from me,' said I.

'Patience, my dear Handel: time enough, time enough. But
you have something more to say?'

'I am ashamed to say it,' I returned, 'and yet it's no worse
to say it than to think it. You call me a lucky fellow. Of course,
I am. I was a blacksmith's boy but yesterday; I am — what shall
I say I am — to-day?'

'Say, a good fellow, if you want a phrase,' returned Herbert,
smiling, and clapping his hand on the back of mine: 'a good
fellow, with impetuosity and hesitation, boldness and diffidence,
action and dreaming, curiously mixed in him.'

I stopped for a moment to consider whether there was this mix-
ture in my character. On the whole, I by no means recognised the
analysis, but thought it not worth disputing.

'When I ask what I am to call myself to-day, Herbert,' I went
on, 'I suggest what I have in my thoughts. You say I am lucky.
I know I have done nothing to raise myself in life, and that For-
tune alone has raised me; that is being very lucky. And yet,
when I think of Estella — '

('And when don't you, you know!' Herbert threw in, with his

L

240 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

eyes on the fire; which I thought kind and sympathetic of him.)

^ — Then, my dear Herbert, I cannot tell you how dependent and
uncertain I feel, and how exposed to hundreds of chances. Avoid-
ing forbidden ground, as you did just now, I may still say that on
the constancy of one person (naming no person) all my expecta-
tions depend. And at the best, how indefinite and unsatisfactory,
only to know so vaguely what they are ! ' In saying this, I relieved
my mind of what had always been there, more or less, though no
doubt most since yesterday.

'Now, Handel,' Herbert replied, in his gay hopeful way, 'it seems
to me that in the despondency of the tender passion, we are look-
ing into our gift-horse's mouth with a magnifying-glass. Likewise,
it seems to me that, concentrating our attention on the examina-
tion, we altogether overlook one of the best points of the animal.
Didn't you tell me that your guardian, Mr. Jaggers, told you in the
beginning, that you were not endowed with expectations only?
And even if he had not told you so — though that is a very large If,
I grant — could you believe that of all men in London, Mr. Jaggers
is the man to hold his present relations towards you unless he were
sure of his ground?'

I said I could not deny that this was a strong point. I said it
(people often do so in such cases) like a rather reluctant con-
cession to truth and justice; — as if I wanted to deny it!

'I should think it was a strong point,' said Herbert, 'and I should
think you would be puzzled to imagine a stronger ; as to the rest,
you must bide your guardian's time, and he must bide his client's
time. You'll be one-and-twenty before you know where you are,
and then perhaps you'll get some further enlightenment. At all
events, you'll be nearer getting it, for it must come at last.'

'What a hopeful disposition you have!' said I, gratefully admir-
ing his cheery ways.

'I ought to have,' said Herbert, 'for I have not much else. I must
acknowledge, by the bye, that the good sense of what I have just
said is not my own, but my father's. The only remark I ever heard
him make on your story, was the final one: "The thing is settled
and done, or Mr. Jaggers would not be in it." And now, before I
say anything more about my father, or my father's son, and repay

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 241

confidence with confidence, I want to make myself seriously dis-
agreeable to you for a moment — positively repulsive.'

'You won't succeed,' said I.

*0h yes, I shall!' said he. 'One, two, three, and now I am in for
it. Handel, my good fellow' : though he spoke in this light tone, he
was very much in earnest: 'I have been thinking since we have
been talking with our feet on this fender, that Estella cannot surely
be a condition of your inheritance, if she was never referred to by
your guardian. Am I right in so understanding what you have told
me, as that he never referred to her, directly or indirectly, in any
way? Never even hinted, for instance, that your patron might
have views as to your marriage ultimately?'

'Never.'

'Now, Handel, I am quite free from the flavour of sour grapes,
upon my soul and honour! Not being bound to her, can you not
detach yourself from her? — I told you I should be disagreeable.'

I turned my head aside, for, with a rush and a sweep, like the
old marsh winds coming up from the sea, a feeling like that which
had subdued me on the morning when I left the forge, when the
mists were solemnly rising, and when I laid my hand upon the vil-
lage finger-post, smote upon my heart again. There was silence
between us for a little while.

'Yes; but my dear Handel,' Herbert went on, as if we had been
talking instead of silent, 'its having been so strongly rooted in the
breast of a boy whom nature and circumstances made so romantic,
renders it very serious. Think of her bringing-up, and think of
Miss Havisham. Think of what she is herself (now I am repulsive
and you abominate me). This may lead to miserable things.'

'I know it, Herbert,' said I, with my head still turned away^
'but I can't help it.'

'You can't detach yourself?'

'No. Impossible!'

'You can't try, Handel?'

'No. Impossible!'

'Well!' said Herbert, getting up with a lively shake as if he had
been asleep, and stirring the fire; 'now I'll endeavour to make my-
self agreeable again!'

242 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

So, he went round the room and shook the curtains out, put the
chairs in their places, tidied the books and so forth that were lying
about, looked into the hall, peeped into the letter-box, shut the
door, and came back to his chair by the fire; when he sat down,
nursing his left leg in both arms.

*I was going to say a word or two, Handel, concerning my father
and my father's son. I am afraid it is scarcely necessary for my
father's son to remark that my father's establishment is not par-
ticularly brilliant in its housekeeping.'

There is always plenty, Herbert,' said I, to say something en-
couraging.

'Oh, yes! and so the dustman says, I believe, with the strongest
approval, and so does the marine-store shop in the back street.
Gravely, Handel, for the subject is grave enough, you know how
it is, as well a^ I do. I suppose there was a time once, when my
father had not given matters up ; but if ever there was, the time is
gone. May I ask you if you have ever had an opportunity of re-
marking, down in your part of the country, that the children of
not exactly suitable marriages, are always most particularly
anxious to be married?'

This was such a singular question, that I asked him, in return,
*Isitso?'

*I don't know,' said Herbert; 'that's what I want to know. Be-
cause it is decidedly the case with us. My poor sister Charlotte
who was next me and died before she was fourteen, was a striking
example. Little Jane is the same. In her desire to be matrimo-
nially established, you might suppose her to have passed her short
existence in the perpetual contemplation of domestic bliss. Little
Alick in a frock has already made arrangements for his union with
a suitable young person at Kew. And, indeed, I think we are all
engaged, except the baby.'

'Then you are?' said I.

*I am,' said Herbert; 'but it's a secret.'

I assured him of my keeping the secret, and begged to be fav-
oured with further particulars. He had spoken so sensibly and
feelingly of my weakness, that I wanted to know something about
his strength.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 243

^May I ask the name?' I said.

'Name of Clara/ said Herbert.

Xive in London?'

'Yes. Perhaps I ought to mention,' said Herbert, who had be-
come curiously crestfallen and meek, since we entered on the in-
teresting theme, 'that she is rather below my mother's nonsensical
family notions. Her father had to do with the victualling of pas-
senger-ships. I think he was a species of purser.'

'What is he now?' said I.

'He's an invalid how,' replied Herbert.

'Living on — ?'

'On the first floor,' said Herbert. Which was not at all what I
meant, for I had intended my question to apply to his means. 'I
have never seen him, for he has always kept his room overhead,
since I have known Clara. But I have heard him constantly. He
makes tremendous rows — roars, and pegs at the floor with some
frightful instrument.' In looking at me and then laughing heartily^
Herbert for the time recovered his usual lively manner.

'Don't you expect to see him?' said I.

'Oh yes, I constantly expect to see him,' returned Herbert, 'be-
cause I never hear him, without expecting him to come tumbling
through the ceiling. But I don't know how long the rafters may
hold.'

When he had once more laughed heartily, he became meek
again, and told me that the moment he began to realise Capital, it
was his intention to marry this young lady. He added as a self-
evident proposition, engendering low spirits, 'But you can't marry,
you know, while you're looking about you.'

As we contemplated the fire, and as I thought what a difficult
vision to realise this same Capital sometimes was, I put my hands
in my pockets. A folded piece of paper in one of them attracting
my attention, I opened it and found it to be the playbill I had re-
ceived from Joe, relative to the celebrated provincial amateur of
Roscian renown. 'And bless my heart,' I involuntarily added
aloud, 'it's to-night!'

This changed the subject in an instant, and made us hurriedly
resolve to go to the play. So, when I had pledged myself to com-

244 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

fort and abet Herbert in the affair of his heart by all practicable
and impracticable means, and when Herbert had told me that his
affianced already knew me by reputation, and that I should be
presented to her, and when we had warmly shaken hands upon our
mutual confidence, we blew out our candles, made up our fire,
locked our door, and issued forth in quest of Mr. Wopsle and
Denmark.

CHAPTER XXXI

On our arrival in Denmark, we found the king and queen of that
country elevated in two arm-chairs on a kitchen-table, holding a
Court. The whole of the Danish nobility were in attendance; con-
sisting of a noble boy in the wash-leather boots of a gigantic an-
cestor, a venerable Peer with a dirty face, who seemed to have
risen from the people late in life, and the Danish chivalry with a
comb in its hair and a pair of white silk legs, and presenting on
the whole a feminine appearance. My gifted townsman stood
gloomily apart, with folded arms, and I could have wished that his
curls and forehead had been more probable.

Several curious little circumstances transpired as the action pro-
ceeded. The late king of the country not only appeared to have
been troubled with a cough at the time of his decease, but to have
taken it with him to the tomb, and to have brought it back. The
royal phantom also carried a ghostly manuscript round its trun-
cheon, to which it had the appearance of occasionally referring,
and that, too, with an air of anxiety and a tendency to lose the
place of reference which were suggestive of a state of mortality. It
was this, I conceive, which led to the Shade's being advised by the
gallery to Hurn over!' — a recommendation which it took extremely
ill. It was likewise to be noted of this majestic spirit that whereas
it always appeared with an air of having been out a long time and
walked an immense distance, it perceptibly came from a closely-
contiguous wall. This occasioned its terrors to be received de-
risively. The Queen of Denmark, a very buxom lady, though no

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 245

doubt historically brazen, was considered by the public to have
too much brass about her; her chin being attached to her diadem
by a broad band of that metal (as if she had a gorgeous tooth-
ache), her waist being encircled by another, and each of her arms
by another, so that she was openly mentioned as Hhe kettle-drum.'
The noble boy in the ancestral boots, was inconsistent; represent-
ing himself as it were in one breath, as an able seaman, a strolling
actor, a gravedigger, a clergyman, and a person of the utmost im-
portance at a Court fencing-match, on the authority of whose
practised eye and nice discrimination the finest strokes were
judged. This gradually led to a want of toleration for him, and
even — on his being detected in holy orders, and declining to per-
form the funeral service — to the general indignation taking the
form of nuts. Lastly, Ophelia was a prey to such slow musical
madness, that when, in course of time, she had taken off her white
muslin scarf, folded it up, and buried it, a sulky man who had been
long cooling his impatient nose against an iron bar in the front
row of the gallery, growled, 'Now the baby's put to bed, let's have
supper! ' Which, to say the least of it, was out of keeping.

Upon my unfortunate townsman all these incidents accumulated
with playful effect. Whenever that undecided Prince had to ask a
question or state a doubt, the public helped him out with it. As
for example; on the question whether 'twas nobler in the mind to
suffer, some roared yes, and some no, and some inclining to both,
opinions said *toss up for it'; and quite a Debating Society arose.
\\'hen he asked what should such fellows as he do crawling be-
tween earth and heaven, he was encouraged with loud cries ol
'Hear, hear!' When he appeared with his stocking disordered (its,
disorder expressed, according to usage, by one very neat fold in
the top, which I suppose to be always got up with a fiat iron), a
conversation took place in the gallery respecting the paleness of)
his leg, and whether it was occasioned by the turn the ghost had
given him. On his taking the recorders — very like a little black
flute that had just been played in the orchestra and handed out at
the door — he was called upon unanimously for Rule Britannia.
When he recommended the player not to saw the air thus, the
sulky man said, 'And don't you do it, neither; you're a deal worse

24^6 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

than himf And I grieve to add that peals of laughter greeted Mr.
Wopsle on every one of these occasions.

But his greatest trials were in the churchyard: which had the
appearance of a primeval forest, with a kind of small ecclesiastical
wash-house on one side, and a turnpike gate on the other. Mr.
Wopsle, in a comprehensive black cloak, being descried entering
at the turnpike, the gravedigger was admonished in a friendly way,
*Look out! Here's the undertaker a coming, to see how you're get-
ting on with your work ! ' I believe it is well known in a constitu-
tional country that Mr. Wopsle could not possibly have returned
the skull, after moralising over it, without dusting his fingers on a
white napkin taken from his breast; but even that innocent and
indispensable action did not pass without the comment 'Wai-ter!'
The arrival of the body for interment (in an empty black box with
the lid tumbling open), was the signal for a general joy which
was much enhanced by the discovery, among the bearers, of an in-
dividual obnoxious to identification. The joy attended Mr. Wop-
sle through his struggle with Laertes on the brink of the orchestra
and the grave, and slackened no more until he had tumbled the
king off the kitchen-table, and had died by inches from the ankles
upwards.

We had made some pale efforts in the beginning to applaud Mr.
Wopsle; but they were too hopeless to be persisted in. Therefore
we had sat, feeling keenly for him, but laughing, nevertheless, from
ear to ear. I laughed in spite of myself all the time, the whole
thing was so droll; and yet I had a latent impression that there
was something decidedly fine in Mr. Wopsle 's elocution — not for
old associations' sake, I am afraid, but because it was very slow,
very dreary, very up-hill and down-hill, and very unlike any way
in which any man in any natural circumstances of life or death
ever expressed himself about anything. When the tragedy was
over, and he had been called for and hooted, I said to Herbert,
*Let us go at once, or perhaps we shall meet him.'

We made all the haste we could downstairs, but we were not
quick enough either. Standing at the door was a Jewish man with
an unnatural heavy smear of eyebrow, who caught my eyes as we
advanced, and said, when we came up with him:

^i

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 247

'Mr. Pip and friend?'

Identity of Mr. Pip and friend confessed.

'Mr. Waldengarver,' said the man, 'would be glad to have the
honour.'

'Waldengarver,' I repeated — when Herbert murmured in my
ear, 'Probably Wopsle.'

'Oh!' said I. 'Yes. Shall we follow you?'

'A few steps, please.' When we were in a side alley, he turned
and asked, 'How do you think he looked? — / dressed him.

I don't know what he had looked like, except a funeral ; with the
addition of a large Danish sun or star hanging round his neck by a
blue ribbon, that had given him the appearance of being insured
in some extraordinary Fire Office. But I said he had looked very
nice.

'When he come to the grave,' said our conductor, 'he showed his
cloak beautiful. But, judging from the wing, it looked to me that
when he see the ghost in the queen's apartment, he might have
made more of his stockings.'

I modestly assented, and we all fell through a little dirty swing
door, into a sort of hot packing-case immediately behind it. Here
Mr. Wopsle was divesting himself of his Danish garments, and
here there was just room for us to look at him over one another's
shoulders, by keeping the packing-case door, or lid, wide open.

'Gentlemen,' said Mr. Wopsle, 'I am proud to see you. I hope,
Mr. Pip, you will excuse my sending round. I had the happiness
to know you in form.er times, and the Drama has ever had a claim
which has ever been acknowledged, on the noble and the affluent.'

Meanwhile, Mr. Waldengarver, in a frightful perspiration, was
trying to get himself out of his princely sables.

'Skin the stockings off, Mr. Waldengarver,' said the owner of
that property, 'or you'll bust 'em. Bust 'em, and you'll bust five-
and-thirty shillings. Shakspeare never was complimented with a
finer pair. Keep quiet in your chair now, and leave 'em to me.'

With that, he went upon his knees, and began to flay his victim;
who, on the first stocking coming off, would certainly have fallen
over backward with his chair, but for there being no room to fall
anyhow.

248 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

I had been afraid until then to say a word about the play. But
then, Mr. Waldengarver looked up at us complacently, and said:

'Gentlemen, how did it seem to you, to go, in front?'

Herbert said from behind (at the same time poking me), 'capi-
tally.' So I said 'capitally.'

'How did you like my reading of the character, gentlemen?' said
Mr. Waldengarver, almost, if not quite, with patronage.

Herbert said from behind (again poking me), 'massive and con-
crete.' So I said boldly, as if I had originated it, and must beg to
insist upon it, 'massive and concrete.'

'I am glad to have your approbation, gentlemen,' said Mr. Wal-
dengarver, with an air of dignity, in spite of his being ground
against the wall at the time, and holding on by the seat of the
chair.

'But I'll tell you one thing, Mr. Waldengarver,' said the man
who was on his knees, 'in which you're out in your reading. Now
mind! I don't care who says contrary; I tell you so. You're out in
your reading of Hamlet when you get your legs in profile. The last
Hamlet as I dressed, made the same mistakes in his reading at re-
hearsal, till I got him to put a large red wafer on each of his shins,
and then at that rehearsal (which was the last) I went in front, sir,
to the back of the pit, and whenever his reading brought him into
profile, I called out "I don't see no wafers!" And at night his
reading was lovely.'

Mr. Waldengarver smiled at me, as much as to say 'a faithful
dependent — I overlook his folly'; and then said aloud, 'My view is
a little classic and thoughtful for them here ; but they will improve,
they will improve.'

Herbert and I said together, Oh, no doubt they would improve.

'Did you observe, gentlemen,' said Mr. Waldengarver, 'that
there was a man in the gallery who endeavoured to cast derision on
the service — I mean, the representation?'

We basely replied that we rather thought we had noticed such a
man. I added, 'He was drunk, no doubt.'

'Oh dear no, sir,' said Mr. Wopsle, 'not drunk. His employer
would see to that, sir. His employer would not allow him to be
drunk.'

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 249

'You know his employer?' said I.

Mr. Wopsle shut his eyes, and opened them again; performing
h both ceremonies very slowly. 'You must have observed, gentle-
men,' said he, 'an ignorant and a blatant ass, with a rasping throat
and a countenance expressive of low malignity, who went through
• — I will not say sustained — the role (if I may use a French ex-
pression) of Claudius King of Denmark. That is his employer,
gentlemen. Such is the profession!'

Without distinctly knowing whether I should have been more
sorry for Mr. Wopsle if he had been in despair, I was so sorry for
him as it was, that I took the opportunity of his turning round to
have his braces put on — which jostled us out at the doorway — to
ask Herbert what he thought of having him home to supper? Her-
bert said he thought it would be kind to do so ; therefore I invited
him, and he went to Barnard's with us, wrapped up to the eyes,
and we did our best for him, and he sat until two o'clock in the
morning, reviewing his success and developing his plans. I forget
in detail what they were, but I have a general recollection that he
was to begin with reviving the Drama, and to end with crushing it;
inasmuch as his decease would leave it utterly bereft and without a
chance or hope.

Miserably I went to bed after all, and miserably thought of Es-
tella, and miserably dreamed that my expectations were all can-
celled, and that I had to give my hand in marriage to Herbert's
Clara, or play Hamlet to Miss Havisham's Ghost, before twenty
thousand people, without knowing twenty words of it.

CHAPTER XXXn

One day when I was busy with my books and Mr. Pocket, I re-
ceived a note by the post, the mere outside of which threw me into
a great flutter; for, though I had never seen the handwriting in
which it was addressed, I divined whose hand it was. It had no
set beginning, as Dear Mr. Pip, or Dear Pip, or Dear Sir, or Dear
Anything, but ran thus:

250 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

'I am to come to London the day after to-morrow, by the mid-
day coach. I beHeve it was settled you should meet me? At all
events Miss Havisham has that impression, and I write in obedi-
ence to it. She sends you her regard. — Yours, Estella.'

If there had been time, I should probably have ordered several
suits of clothes for this occasion; but as there was not, I was fain
to be content with those I had. INly appetite vanished instantly,
and I knew no peace or rest until the day arrived. Not that its
arrival brought me either; for, then I was worse than ever, and
began haunting the coach-office in Wood Street, Cheapside, before
the coach had left the Blue Boar in our town. For all that I knew
this perfectly well, I still felt as if it were not safe to let the coach-
office be out of my sight longer than five minutes at a time;
and in this condition of unreason I performed the first half-hour
of a watch of four or five hours, when Wemmick ran against
me.

'Halloa, Mr. Pip,' said he, 'how do you do? I should hardly
have thought this was your beat.'

I explained that I was waiting to meet somebody who was com-
ing up by coach, and I inquired after the Castle and the Aged.

'Both flourishing, thankye,' said Wemmick, 'and particularly
the Aged. He's in wonderful feather. He'll be eighty-two next
birthday. I have a notion of firing eighty-two times, if the neigh-
bourhood shouldn't complain, and that cannon of mine should
prove equal to the pressure. However, this is not London talk.
Where do you think I am going to?'

'To the office,' said I, for he was tending in that direction.

'Next thing to it,' returned Wemmick, 'I am going to Newgate.
We are in a banker's-parcel case just at present, and I have been
down the road taking a squint at the scene of action, and there-
upon must have a word or two with our client.'

'Did your client commit the robbery?' I asked.

'Bless your soul and body, no.' answered Wemmick, very drily.
'But he is accused of it. So might you or I be. Either of us might
be accused of it, you know.'

'Only neither of us is,' I remarked.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 251

*Yah!' said Wemmick, touching me on the breast with his fore-
finger; 'you're a deep one, Mr. Pip! Would you like to have a
look at Newgate? Have you time to spare?'

I had so much time to spare that the proposal came as a relief,
notwithstanding its irreconcilability with my latent desire to keep
my eye on the coach-office. ^Muttering that I would make the in-
quiry whether I had time to walk with him, I went into the office,
and ascertained from the clerk with the nicest precision and much
to the trying of his temper, the earliest moment at which the coach
could be expected — w'lich I knew beforehand, quite as well as he.
I then reioined Mr. Wemm'ck, and affecting to consult my watch
and to be surprised by the information I had received, accepted
his offer.

We were at Newgate in a few minutes, and we passed through
the lodge where some fetters were hanging up on the bare walls
among the prison rules into the interior of the jail. At that time,
jails were much neglected, and the period of exaggerated re-action
consequent on all public wrong-doing — and which is always its
heaviest and longest punishment — was still far off. So, felons were
not lodged and fed better than soldiers (to say nothing of pau-
pers), and seldom set fire to their prisons with the excusable ob-
ject of improving the flavour of their soup. It was visiting time
when Wemmick took me in; and a potman was going his rounds
with beer; and the prisoners, behind the bars in yards, were buy-
ing beer, and talking to friends; and a irouzy, ugly, disorderly,
depressing scene it was.

It struck me that Wemmick walked among the prisoners, much
as a gardener might walk among his plants. This was first put into
my head by his seeing a shoot that had come up in the night, and
saying, 'What, Captain Tom? Are you there? Ah, Indeed?' and
also, 'Is that Black Bill behind the cistern? Why I didn't look for
you these two months; how do you find yourself?' Equally in his
stopping at the bars and attending to anxious whisperers — always
singly — Wemmick, with his post-office in an immovable state,
looked at them while in conference, as if he were taking particular
notice of the advance they had made, since last observed, towards
coming out in full blow at their trial.

252 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

He was highly popular, and I' found that he took the familiar
department of Mr. Jaggers's business: though something of the
state of Mr. Jaggers hung about him too, forbidding approach be-
yond certain limits. His personal recognition of each successive
client was comprised in a nod, and in his settling his hat a little
easier on his head with both hands, and then tightening the post-
office, and putting his hands in his pockets. In one or two instances,
there was a difficulty respecting the raising of fees, and then Mr.
Wemmick, backing as far as possible from the insufficient money
produced, said, 'It's no use, my boy. I am only a subordinate. I
can't take it. Don't go on in that way with a subordinate. If
you are unable to make up your quantum, my boy, you had better
address yourself to a principal; here are plenty of principals in
the profession, you know, and what is not worth the while of one,
may be worth the while of another; that's my recommendation to
you, speaking as a subordinate. Don't try on useless measures.
Why should you? Now who's next?'

Thus, we walked through Wemmick's greenhouse, until he
turned to me and said, ^Notice the man I shall shake hands with.'
I should have done so, without the preparation, as he had shaken
hands with no one yet.

Almost as soon as he had spoken, a portly upright man (whom
I can see now, as I write) in a well-worn olive-coloured frock-coat,
with a peculiar pallor overspreading the red in his complexion, and
eyes that went wandering about when he tried to fix them, came
up to a corner of the bars, and put his hand to his hat — which had
a greasy and fatty surface like cold broth — with a half-serious and
half-jocose military salute.

'Colonel, to you!' said Wemmick; 'how are you Colonel?'

'All right, Mr. Wemmick.'

'Everything was done that could be done, but the evidence was
too strong for us. Colonel.'

*Yes, it was too strong, sir — but / don't care.'

'No, no,' said Wemmick, coolly, you don't care.' Then turning
to me, 'Served His Majesty, this man. Was a soldier in the line
and bought his discharge.'

I said, 'Indeed?' and the man's eyes looked at me, and then

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 253

looked over my head, and then looked all round me, and then he
drew his hand across his hps and laughed.

'I think I shall be out of this on Monday, sir,' he said to Wem-
mick.

'Perhaps,' returned my friend, 'but there's no knowing.'

'I am glad to have the chance of bidding you good-bye, Mr.
Wemmick,' said the man, stretching out his hand between twe
bars.

'Thankye,' said Wemmick, shaking hands with him. 'Same to
you. Colonel.'

'If what I had upon me when taken, had been real, Mr. Wem-
mick,' said the man, unwilling to let his hand go, 'I should have
asked the favour of your wearing another ring — in acknowledg-
ment of your attentions.'

'I'll accept the will for the deed,' said Wemmick. 'By the bye;
you were quite a pigeon-fancier.' The man looked up at the sky.
'1 am told you had a remarkable breed of tumblers. Could you
commission any friend of yours to bring me a pair, if you've no
further use for 'em?'

'It shall be done, sir.'

'All right,' said Wemmick, 'they shall be taken care of. Good
afternoon, Colonel. Good-bye!' They shook hands again, and as
we walked away Wemmick said to me, 'A coiner, a very good
workman. The Recorder's report is made to-day, and he is sure to
be executed on Monday. Still you see, as far as it goes, a pair of
pigeons are portable property, all the same.' With that he looked
back, and nodded at his dead plant, and then cast his eyes about
him in walking out of the yard, as if he were considering what
other pot would go best in its place.

As we came out of the prison through the lodge, I found that
the great importance of my guardian was appreciated by the turn-
keys, no less than by those whom they held in charge. 'Well, Mr.
Wemmick,' said the turnkey, who kept us between the two stud-
ded and spiked lodge gates, and who carefully locked one before
he unlocked the other, 'what's Mr. Jaggers going to do with that
Waterside murder? Is he going to make it manslaughter, or what
is he going to make of it?'

254 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

Why don't you ask him?' returned Wemmick.

'Oh, yes, I dare say I' said the turnkey.

'Now, that's the way with them here, Mr. Pip,' remarked Wem-
mick, turning to me with his post-office elongated. 'They don't
mind what they ask of me, the subordinate ; but you'll never catch
*em asking any questions of my principal.'

'Is th'S young gentleman one of the 'prentices or articled ones
of your office?' asked the turnkey, with a grin at Mr. Wemmick's
humour.

'There he goes again, you see!' cried Wemmick. 'I told you so!
Asks another question of the subordinate before the first is dry I
Well, supposing Mr. Pip is one of them?'

'Why then,' said the turnkey, grinning again, 'he knows what
Mr. Jaggers is.'

'Yah!' cried Wemmick, suddenly hitting out at the turnkey in
a facetious way, 'you're as dumb as one of your own keys when
you have to do with my principal, you know you are. Let us out*
you old fox, or I'll get him to bring an action against you for false
imprisonment.'

The turnkey laughed, and gave us good-bye, and stood laughing
at us over the spikes of the wicket when he descended the «^teps
into the street.

*Mind you, Mr. Pip,' said Wemmick, gravely in my ear, as he
took my arm to be more confidential; 'I don't know that Mr. Jag-
gers does a better thing than the way in which he keeps himself so
high. He's always so high. His constant height is of a piece with
his immense abilities. That Colonel durst no more take leave of
him, than that turnkey durst ask him his intentions respecting a
case. Then, between his height and them, he slips in his subor-
dinate— don't you see? — and so he has 'em, soul and body.'

I was very much impressed, and not for the first time, by my
guardian's subtlety. To confess the truth, I very heartily wished,
and not for the first time, that I had had some other guardian of
minor abilities.

Mr. Wemmick and I parted at the office in Little Britain, where
suppliants for Mr. Jaggers's notice were lingering about as usual,
and I returned to my watch in the street of the coach-office, with

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 255

some three hours on hand. I consumed the whole time in ^hink
ing how strange it was that I should be encompassed by all this
taint of prison and crimes; that, in my childhood out on our lonely
marshes on a winter evening I should have first encountered it;
that, it should have reappeared on two occasions, starting out like
a stain that was faded but not gone; that, it should in this new
way pervade my fortune and advancement. While my mind was
thus engaged, I thought of the beautiful young Estella, proud and
refined, coming toward me, and I thought with absolute abhorrence
of the contrast between the jail and her. I wished that Wemmick
had not met me, or that I had not yielded to him and gone with
him, so that, of all days in the year on this day, I might not have
had Newgate in my breath and on my clothes. I beat the prison
dust off my feet as I sauntered to and fro, and I shook it out of
my dress, and I exhaled its air from my lungs. So contaminated did
I feel, remembering who was coming, that the coach came quick-
ly after all, and I was not yet free from the soiling consciousness
of Mr. Wemmick 's conservatory, when I saw her face at the coach
window and her hand waving to me.

What was the nameless shadow which again in that one instant
had passed?

CHAPTER XXXIII

In her furred travelling-dress, Estella seemed more delicately
beautiful than she had ever seemed yet, even in my eyes. Her
manner was more winning than she had cared to let it be to me
before, and I thought I saw Miss Havisham's influence in the
change.

We stood in the Inn Yard while she pointed out her luggage to
me, and when it was all collected I remember — having forgotten
everything but herself in the meanwhile — that I knew nothing of
her destination.

'I am going to Richmond,' she told me. 'Our lesson is, that there
are two Richmonds, one in Surrey and one in Yorkshire, and th^t
mine is the Surrey Richmond. The distance is ten miles. I am to

256 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

have a carriage, and you are to take me. This is my purse, and you
are to pay my charges out of it. Oh, you must take the purse! We
have no choice, you and I, but to obey our instructions. We are
not free to follow our own devices, you and I.'

As she looked at me in giving me the purse, I hoped there was
an inner meaning in her words. She said them slightingly, but not
with displeasure.

'A carriage will have to be sent for, Estella. Will you rest here
a little?'

^Yes, I am to rest here a little, and I am to drink some tea, and
you are to take care of me the while.'

She drew her arm through mine, as if it must be done, and I
requested a waiter who had been staring at the coach like a man
who had never seen such a thing in his life, to show us a private
sitting-room. Upon that, he pulled out a napkin, as if it were a
magic clue without which he couldn't find the way upstairs, and
led us to the black hole of the establishment: fitted up with a dim-
inishing mirror (quite a superfluous article considering the hole's
proportions), an anchovy sauce-cruet, and somebody's pattens. On
my objecting to this retreat, he took us into another room with a
dinner-table for thirty, and in the grate a scorched leaf of a copy-
book under a bushel of coal-dust. Having looked at this extinct
conflagration and shaken his head, he took my order: which prov-
ing to be merely 'Some tea for the lady,' sent him out of the room
in a very low state of mind.

I was, and I am, sensible that the air of this chamber, in its
strong combination of stable with soup-stock, might have led one
to infer that the coaching department was not doing well, and that
the enterprising proprietor was boiling down the horses for the
refreshment department. Yet the room was all in all to me, Estella
being in it. I thought that with her I could have been happy
there for life. (I was not at all happy there at the time, observe,
and I knew it well.)

'Where are you going to, at Richmond?' I asked Estella.

'I am going to live,' said she, 'at a great expense, with a lady
there, who has the power — or says she has — of taking me about.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 257

and introducing me, and showing people to me and showing me to
people.'

'I suppose you will be glad of variety and admiration?'

'Yes, I suppose so.'

She answered so carelessly, that I said, 'You speak of yourself
as if you were some one else.'

'Where did you learn how I speak of others? Come, come,'
said Estella, smiling delightfully, 'you must not expect me to go
to school to you; I must talk in my own way. How do you thrive
with Mr. Pocket?'

T live quite pleasantly there; at least — ' It appeared to me
that I was losing a chance.

'At least?' repeated Estella.

'As pleasantly as I could anywhere, away from you.'

'You silly boy,' said Estella, quite composedly, how can you
talk such nonsense? Your friend Mr. Matthew, I believe, is super-
ior to the rest of his family?'

'Very superior indeed. He is nobody's enemy — '

' — Don't add but his own,' interposed Estella, 'for I hate that
class of man. But he really is disinterested, and above small jeal-
ousy and spite, I have heard?'

'I am sure I have every reason to say so.'

'You have not every reason to say so of the rest of his people,'
said Estella, nodding at me with an expression of face that was
at once grave and rallying, 'for they beset Miss Havisham with re-
ports and insinuations to your disadvantage. They watch you,
misrepresent you, write letters about you (anonymous sometimes),
and you are the torment and occupation of their lives. You can
scarcely realise to yourself the hatred those people feel for you.'

'They do me no harm, I hope?'

Instead of answering, Estella burst out laughing. This was very
singular to me, and I looked at her in considerable perplexity.
When she left off — and she had not laughed languidly, but with
real enjoyment — I said, in my diffident way with her:

'I hope I may suppose that you would not be amused if they did
me any harm?'

'No, no, you may be sure of that,' said Estella. 'You may be

258 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

certain that I laugh because they fail. Oh, those people with Miss
Havisham, and the tortures they undergo!' She laughed again,
and even now, when she had told me why, her laughter was very
singular to me, for I could not doubt its being genuine, and yet
it seemed too much for the occasion. I thought there must really
be something more here than I knew; she saw the thought in my
mind and answered it.

'It is not easy for even you,' said Estella, *to know what satis-
factioi? it gives me to see those people thwarted, or what an en-
joyace sense of the ridiculous I have when they are made ridicul-
ous. For you were not brought up in that strange house from a
mere baby. — I was. You had not your little wits sharpened by
their intriguing ?.;ainst you, suppressed and defenceless, under the
mask of sympathy and pity and what not, that is soft and sooth-
ing.— 1 :iad. You did not gradually open your round childish eyes
wider and wider tc the discovery of that impostor of a woman who
calculates her stci;r of peace of mind for when she wakes up in
the night.— I did.'

It was no laughing matter with Estella now, nor was she sum-
moning these remembrances from any shallow place. I would not
have been the cause of that look of hers, for all my expectations
in a heap.

'Two things I can tell you,' said Estella. 'First, notwithstanding
the proverb, that constant dropping will wear away a stone, you
may set your mind at rest that these people never will — never
would in a thousand years — impair your ground with Miss Havi-
iham, in any particular, great or small. Second, I am beholden to
you as the cause of their being so busy and so mean in vain, and
there is my hand upon it.'

As she gave it me playfully —for her darker mood had been but
momentary — I held it and put it to my lips. 'You ridiculous boy,'
said Estella, 'will you never take warning? Or do you kiss my hand
in the same spirit in which I once let you kiss my cheek?'

'What spirit was that?' said I.

'I must think a moment. A spirit of contempt for the fawners
and plotters.'

'If I say yes, may I kiss the cheek again?'

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 259

^You should have asked before you touched the hand. But,
yes, if you like.'

I leaned down, and her calm face was like a statuc^'s. 'Now,'
said Estella, gliding away the instant I touched her cheek, 'vcu are
to take care that I have some tea, and you are to take me to
Richmond.'

Her reverting to this tone as if our association were forced upon
us and we were mere puppets, gave me pain ; but everything in our
intercourse did give me pain. Whatever her tone with me hap-
pened to be, I could put no trust in it, and build no hope on it;
and yet I went on against trust and against hope. Why repeat it
a thousand times? So it always was.

I rang for the tea, and the waiter, reappearing with his magic
clue, brought in by degrees some fifty adjuncts to that refresh-
ment, but of tea not a glimpse. A teaboard, cups and saucers,
plates, knives and forks (including carvers), spoons (various),
salt-cellars, a rneek little muffin confined with the utmost pre-
caution under a strong iron cover, Moses in the bulrushes typi-
fied by a soft bit of butter in a quartity of parsley, a pale loaf with
a powdered head, two [Toof impres ;ions of the bars of the kitchen
fire-place on triangular bits of bread, and ultimately a fat family
urn: which the waiter staggered in with, expressing in his counten-
ance burden and suffering. After a prolonged absence at this stage
of the entertainment, he at length came back with a casket of
precious aopearance containing twigs. These I steeped in hot
water, and so from the whole of these appliances extracted one
cup of I don't know what, for Estella.

The bill paid, and the waiter remembered, and the ostler not
forgotten, and the chambermaid taken into consideration — in a
word, the whole house bribed into a state of contempt and anim-
osity, and Estella's purse much lightened — we got into our post-
coach and drove away. Turning into Cheapside and rattling up
Newgate Street, we were soon under the walls of which I was so
ashamed.

'What place is that?' Estella asked me.

I made a foolish pretence of not at first recognising it, and then
lold her. As she looked at it, and drew in her head again, mur-

260 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

muring 'Wretches!' I would not have confessed to my visit for any
consideration.

'Mr. Jaggers,' said I, by way of putting it neatly on somebody
else, 'has the reputation of being more in the secrets of that dis-
mal place than any man in London.'

'He is more in the secrets of every place, I think,' said Estella,
in a low voice.

'You have been accustomed to see him often, I suppose?'

'I have been accustomed to see him at uncertain intervals, ever
since I can remember. But I know him no better now, than I did
before I could speak plainly. What is your own experience of him?
Do you advance with him?'

'Once habituated to his distrustful manner,' said I, 'I have done
very well.'

'Are you intimate?'

'I have dined with him at his private house.'

'I fancy,' said Estella, shrinking, 'that must be a curious place.'

'It is a curious place.'

I should have been chary of discussing my guardian too freely
even with her; but I should have gone on with the subject so far
as to describe the dinner in Gerrard Street, if we had not then
come into a sudden glare of gas. It seemed, while it lasted, to be
all alight and alive with that inexplicable feeling I had had before;
and when we were out of it, I was as much dazed for a few mo-
ments as if I had been in Lightning.

So, we fell into other talk, and it was principally about the way
by which we were travelling, and about what parts of London lay
on this side of it, and what on that. The great city was almost
new to her, she told me, for she had never left Miss Havisham's
neighbourhood until she had gone to France, and she had merely
passed through London then in going and returning. I asked her
if my guardian had any charge of her while she remained here?
To that she emphatically said, 'God forbid!' and no more.

It was impossible for me to avoid seeing that she cared to at-
tract me ; that she made herself winning ; and would have won me
even if the task had needed pains. Yet this made me none the
happier, for, even if she had not taken that tone of our being dis-

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 261

posed of by others, I should have felt that she held my heart in
her hand because she wilfully chose to do it, and not because it
would have wrung any tenderness in her, to crush it and throw it
away.

When we passed through Hammersmith, I showed her where
Mr. Matthew Pocket lived, and said it was no great way from
Richmond, and that I hoped I should see her sometimes.

'Oh yes, you are to see me; you are to come when you think
proper; you are to be mentioned to the family; indeed you are
already mentioned:'

I inquired was it a large household she was going to be a member
of?

'No; there are only two; mother and daughter. The mother is a
lady of some station, though not averse to increasing her income.'

'I wonder Miss Havisham could part with you again so soon.'

'It is a part of Miss Havisham's plans for me, Pip,' said Estella,
with a sigh, as if she were tired; 'I am to write to her constantly
and see her regularly, and report how I go on — I and the jewels — •
for they are nearly all mine now.'

It was the first time she had ever called me by my name. Of
course she did so purposely, and knew that I should treasure it up.

We came to Richmond all too soon, and our destination there,
was a house by the Green: a staid old house, where hoops and
powder and patches, embroidered coats, rolled stockings, ruffles,
and swords, had had their court days many a time. Some ancient
trees before the house were still cut into fashions as formal and
unnatural as the hoops and wigs and stiff skirts; but their own
allotted places in the great procession of the dead were not far
off, and they would soon drop into them and go the silent way of
the rest.

A bell with an old voice — which I dare say in its time had often
said to the house, Here is the green farthingale, Here is the dia-
mond-hilted sword. Here are the shoes with red heels and the blue
solitaire, — sounded gravely in the moonlight, and two cherry-col-
oured maids came fluttering out to receive Estella. The doorway
soon absorbed her boxes, and she gave me her hand and a smile,
and said good-night, and was absorbed likewise. And still I stood

262 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

looking at the house, thinking how happy I should be if I lived
there with her, and knowing that I never was happy with her, but
always miserable.

I got into the carriage to be taken back to Hammersmith, and I
got in with a bad heart-ache, and I got out with a worse heart-
ache. At our own door I found little Jane Pocket coming home
from a little party, escorted by her little lover; and I envied her
little lover, in spite of his being subject to Flopson.

Mr. Pocket was out lecturing; for he was a most delightful
lecturer on domestic economy, and his treatises on the manage-
ment of children and servants were considered the very best text-
books on those themes. But Mrs. Pocket was at home, and was in
a little difficulty, on account of the baby's having been accom-
modated with a needle-case to keep him quiet during the unac-
countable absence (with a relative in the Foot Guards) of Millers.
And more needles were missing than it could be regarded as quite
wholesome for a patient of such tender years either to apply ex-
ternally or to take as a tonic.

Mr. Pocket being justly celebrated for giving most excellent
practical advice, and for having a clear and sound perception of
things and a highly judicious mind, I had some notion in my heart-
ache of begging him to accept my confidence. But happening to
look up at^ Mrs. Pocket as she sat reading her book of dignities
after prescribing Bed as a sovereign remedy for baby, I thought —
Well— No, 1 wouldn't.

CHAPTER XXXIV

As I had grown accustomed to my expectations, I had insensibly
begun to notice their effect upon myself and those around me.
Their influence on my own character I disguised from my recogni-
tion as much as possible, but I knew very well that it was not all
good. I lived in a state of chronic uneasiness respecting my be-
haviour to Joe. My conscience was not by any means comfortable
about Biddy. When I woke up in the night — like Camilla — I used
to think, with a weariness on my spirits, that I should have been

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 263

happier and better if I had never seen Miss Havisham's face, and
had risen to manhood content to be partners with Joe in the honest
old forge. Many a time of an evening, when I sat alone looking
at the fire, I thought, after all, there was no fire like the forge fire
and the kitchen fire at home.

Yet Estella was so inseparable from all my restlessness and dis-
quiet of mind, that I really fell into confusion as to the limits of
my own part in its production. That is to say, supposing I had
had no expectations, and yet had had Estella to think of, I could
not make out to my satisfaction that I should have done much
better. Now, concerning the influence of my position on others.
I was in no such difficulty, and so I perceived — though dimly
enough perhaps — that it was not beneficial to anybody, and, above
all, that it was not beneficial to Herbert. My lavish habits led his
easy nature into expenses that he could not afford, corrupted the
simplicity of his life, and disturbed his peace with anxieties and
regrets. I was not at all remorseful for having unwittingly set
those other branches of the Pocket family to the poor arts they
practised: because such littlenesses were their natural bent, and
would have been evoked by anybody else, if I had left them slum-
bering. But Herbert's was a very different case, and it often caused
me a twinge to think that I had done him evil service in crowding
his sparely-furnished chambers with incongruous upholstery work,
and placing the canary-breasted Avenger at his disposal.

So now, as an infallible way of making little ease great ease, I
began to contract a quantity of debt. I could hardly begin but
Herbert must begin too, so he soon followed. At Startop's sugges-
tion, we put ourselves down for election into a club called the
Finches of the Grove: the object of which institution I have never
divined, if it were not that the members should dine expensively
once a fortnight, to quarrel among themselves as much as possible
after dinner, and to cause six waiters to get drunk on the stairs. I
know that these gratifying social ends were so invariably accom-
plished, that Herbert and I understood nothing else to be referred
to in the first standing toast of the society: which ran, 'Gentlemen,
may the present promotion of good feeling ever reign predominant
among the Finches of the Grove.'

264^ GREAT EXPECTATIONS

The Finches spent their money foolishly (the Hotel we dined at
was in Covent Garden), and the first Finch I saw when I had the
honour of joining the Grove was Bentley Drummle: at that time
floundering about town in a cab of his own, and doing a great
deal of damage to the posts at the street corners. Occasionally, he
shot himself out of his equipage head-foremost over the apron;
and I saw him on one occasion deliver himself at the door of the
Grove in this unintentional way — like coals. But here I anticipate
a little, for I was not a Finch, and could not be, according to the
sacred laws of the society, until I came of age.

In my confidence in my own resources, I would willingly have
taken Herbert's expenses on myself; but Herbert was proud, and
I could make no such proposal to him. So, he got into difficulties
in every direction, and continued to look about him. When we
gradually fell into keeping late hours and late company, I noticed
that he looked about him with a desponding eye at breakfast-time ;
that he began to look about him more hopefully about mid-day;
that he drooped when he came in to dinner; that he seemed to
descry Capital in the distance, rather clearly, after dinner; that he
all but realised Capital towards midnight; and that about two
o'clock in the morning he became so deeply despondent again as to
talk of buying a rifle and going to America, with a general pur-
pose of compelling buffaloes to make his fortune.

I was usually at Hammersmith about half the week, and when I
was at Hammersmith I haunted Richmond: whereof separately
by and by. Herbert would often come to Hammersmith when I
was there, and I think at those seasons his father would occasion-
ally have some passing perception that the opening he was looking
for had not appeared yet. But in the general tumbling up of the
family, his tumbling somewhere, was a thing to transact itself
somehow. In the meantime Mr. Pocket grew greyer, and tried
oftener to lift himself out of his perplexities by the hair. While
Mrs. Pocket tripped up the family with her footstool, read her
book of dignities, lost her pocket-handkerchief, told us about her
grandpapa, and taught the young idea how to shoot, by shooting
it into bed whenever it attracted her notice.

As I am now generalising a period of my life with the object of

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 265

clearing my way before me, I can scarcely do so better than by at
once completing the description of our usual manners and customs
at Barnard's Inn.

We spent as much money as we could, and got as little for it
as people could make up their minds to give us. We were always
more or less miserable, and most of our acquaintance were in the
same condition. There was a gay fiction among us that we were
constantly enjoying ourselves, and a skeleton truth that we never
did. To the best of my belief, our case was in the last aspect a
rather common one:

Every morning, with an air ever new, Herbert went into the
City to look about him. I often paid him a visit in the dark back-
room in which he consorted with an ink-jar, a hat-peg, a coal-box,
a string-box, an almanack, a desk and stool, and a ruler ; and I do
not remember that I ever saw him do anything else but look about
him. If we all did what we undertake to do, as faithfully as Her-
bert did, we might live in a Republic of the Virtues. He had
nothing else to do, poor fellow, except at a certain hour of every
afternoon to 'go to Lloyd's' — in observance of a ceremony of see-
ing his principal, I think. He never did anything else in connec-
tion with Lloyd's that I could find out, except come back again.
When he felt his case unusually serious, and that he positively
must find an opening, he would go on 'Change at a busy time,
and walk in and out, in a kind of gloomy country-dance figure,
among the assembled magnates. 'For,' says Herbert to me, com-
ing home* to dinner on one of those special occasions, 'I find the
truth to be, Handel, that an opening won't come to one, but one
must go to it — so I have been.'

If we had been less attached to one another, I think we must
have hated one another regularly every morning. I detested the
chambers beyond expression at that period of repentance, and
could not endure the sight of the Avenger's liberty: which had a
more expensive and a less remunerative appearance then, than at
any other time in the four-and-twenty hours. As we got more and
more into debt, breakfast became a hollower and hollower form,
and being on one occasion at breakfast-time threatened (by let-
ter) with legal proceedings, 'not unwholly unconnected,' as my lo-

266 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

cal paper might put it, 'with jewellery,' I went so far as to seize the
Avenger by his blue collar and shake him off his feet — so that he
was actually in the air, like a booted Cupid — for presuming to
suppose that we wanted a roll.

At certain times — meaning at uncertain times, for they depend-
ed on our humour — I would say to Herbert, as if it were a remark-
able discovery:

*My dear Herbert, we are getting on badly.'

*My dear Handel,' Herbert would say to me, in all sincerity,
*if you will believe me, those very words were on my lips, by a
strange coincidence.'

Then, Herbert,' I would respond, 'let us look into our affairs.'

We always derived profound satisfaction from making an ap-
pointment for this purpose. I always thought this was business,
this was the way to confront the thing, this was the way to take
the foe by the throat. And I know Herbert thought so too.

We ordered something rather special for dinner, with a bottle
of something similarly out of the common way, in order that our
minds might be fortified for the occasion, and we might come well
up to the mark. Dinner over, we produced a bundle of pens, a
copious supply of ink, and a goodly show of writing and blotting
paper. For, there was something very comfortable in having plenty
of stationery.

I would then take a sheet of paper, and < nte across the top of
it, in a neat hand, the heading, 'Memorandum of Pip's debts';
with Barnard's Inn and the date very carefully added. Herbert
would also take a sheet of paper, and write across it with similar
formalities, 'Memorandum of Herbert's debts.'

Each of us would then refer to a confused heap of papers at his
side, which had been thrown into drawers, worn into holes in
pockets, half-burnt in lighting candles, stuck for weeks into the
looking-glass, and otherwise damaged. The sound of our pens
going refreshed us exceedingly, insomuch that I sometimes found it
difficult to distinguish between this edifying business proceeding
and actually paying the money. In point of meritorious character,
the two things seemed about equal.

When he had written a little while, I would ask Herbert how

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 267

he got on? Herbert probably would have been scratching his head
in a most rueful manner at the sight of his accumulating figures.

'They are mounting up, Handel,' Herbert would say; 'upon my
life they are mounting up.'

'Be firm, Herbert,' I would retort, plying my own pen with great
assiduity. 'Look the thing in the face. Look into your affairs.
Stare them out of countenance.'

'So I would, Handel, only they are staring me out of counte-
nance.'

However, my determined manner would have its effect, and
Herbert would fall to work again. After a time he would give up
once more, on the plea that he had not got Cobb's bill, or Lobb's,
or Nobb's, as the case might be.

'Then, Herbert, estimate; estimate it in round numbers, and put
it down.'

'What a fellow of resource you are! ' my friend would reply, with
admiration. 'Really your business powers are very remarkable.'

I thought so too. I established with myself, on these occasions,
the reputation of a first-rate man of business — prompt, decisive,
energetic, clear, cool-headed. When I had got all my responsibili-
ties down upon my list, I compared each with the bill, and ticked
V <jif. My self-approval when I ticked an entry was quite a
luxurious sensation. When I had no more ticks to make, I folded
all my bills up uniformly, docketed each on the back, and tied
the whole into a symmetrical bundle. Then I did the same for
Herbert (who modestly said he had not my administrative genius),
and felt that I had brought his affairs into a focus for him.

My business habits had one other bright feature, which I called
'leaving a margin.' For example; supposing Herbert's debts to be
one hundred and sixty-four pounds four-and-twopence, I would
say, 'Leave a margin, and put them down at two hundred.' Or,
supposing my own to be four times as much, I would leave a
margin, and put them down at seven hundred. I had the highest
opinion of the wisdom of this same Margin, but I am bound to
acknowledge that on looking back, I deem it to have been an
expensive device. For, we always ran into new debt immediately,
to the full extent of the margin, and sometimes, in the sense of

268 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

freedom and solvency it imparted, got pretty far on into another
another margin.

But there was a calm, a rest, a virtuous hush, consequent on
these examinations of our affairs, that gave me, for the time, an
admirable opinion of myself. Soothed by my exertions, my method,
and Herbert's compliments, I would sit with his symmetrical
bundle and my own on the table before me among the stationery,
and feel like a Bank of some sort, rather than a private individual.

We shut our outer door on these solemn occasions in order
that we might not be interrupted. I had fallen into my serene
state one evening, when we heard a letter dropped through the
slit in the said door, and fall on the ground. 'It's for you, Handel,'
said Herbert, going out and coming back with it, 'and I hope there
is nothing the matter. This was in allusion to its heavy black
seal and border.

The letter was signed Trabb & Co., and its contents were
simply, that I was an honoured sir, and that they begged to inform
me that Mrs. J. Gargery had departed this life on Monday last
at twenty minutes past six in the evening, and that my attendance
was requested at the interment on Monday next at three o'clock
in the afternoon.

CHAPTER XXXV

It was the first time that a grave had opened in my road of life,
and the gap it made in the smooth ground was wonderful. The
figure of my sister in her chair by the kitchen fire, haunted me
night and day. That the place could possibly be, without her, was
something my mind seemed unable to compass; and whereas she
had seldom or never been in my thoughts of late, I had now the
strangest idea that she was coming towards me in the street, or
that she would presently knock at the door. In my rooms too, with
which she had never been at all associated, there was at once the
blankness of death and a perpetual suggestion of the sound of her
voice or the turn of her face or figure, as if she were still alive and
had been often there.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 2m

Whatever my fortunes might have been, I could scarcely have
recalled my sister with much tenderness. But I suppose there is a
shock of regret which may exist without much tenderness. Under
its influence (and perhaps to make up for the want of the softer
feeling) I was seized with a violent indignation against the assail-
ant from whom she had suffered so much; and I felt that on
sufficient proof I could have revengefully pursued Orlick, or any
one else, to the last extremity.

Having written to Joe, to offer him consolation, and to assure
him that I would come to the funeral, I passed the intermediate
days in the curious state of mind I have glanced at. I went down
early in the morning, and alighted at the Blue Boar, in good time
to walk over to the forge.

It was fine summer weather again, and, as I walked along, the
times when I was a little helpless creature, and my sister did not
spare me, vividly returned. But they returned with a gentle tone
upon them, that softened even the edge of Tickler. For now, the
very breath of the beans and clover whispered to my heart that
the day must come when it would be well for my memory that
others walking in the sunshine should be softened as they thought
of me.

At last I came within sight of the house, and saw that Trabb
and Co. had put in a funereal execution and taken possession.
Two dismally absurd persons, each ostentatiously exhibiting a
crutch done up in a black bandage — as if that instrument could
possibly communicate any comfort to anybody — were posted at the
front door; and in one of them I recognized a postboy discharged
from the Boar for turning a young couple into a sawpit on their
bridal morning in consequence of intoxication rendering it
necessary for him to ride his horse clasped round the neck with
both arms. All the children of the village, and most of the women,
were admiring these sable warders and the closed windows of the
house and forge; and as I came up, one of the two warders (the
postboy) knocked at the door — implying that I was far too much
exhausted by grief, to have strength remaining to knock for mv-
self.

Another sable warder (a carpenter, who had once eaten two

270 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

geese for a wager) opened the door, and showed me into the best
parlour. Here, Mr. Trabb had taken unto himself the best table,
and had got all the leaves up, and was holding a kind of black
Bazaar, with the aid of a quantity of black pins. At the moment
of my arrival, he had just finished putting somebody's hat into
black long-clothes, like an African baby; so he held out his hand
for mine. But I misled by the action, and confused by the occa-
sion, shook hands with him with every testimony of warm affection.

Poor dear Joe, entangled in a little black cloak tied in a large
bow under his chin, was seated apart at the upper end of the room;
where, as chief mourner, he had evidently been stationed by
Trabb. When I bent down and said to. him, 'Dear Joe, how are
you?' he said. Tip, old chap, you know'd her when she were a fine
figure of a — ' and clasped my hand and said no more.

Biddy, looking very neat and modest in her black dress, went
quietly here and there, and was very helpful. When I had spoken
to Biddy, as I thought it not a time for talking, I went and sat
down near Joe, and there began to wonder in what part of the
house it — she — my sister was. The air of the parlour being faint
with the smell of sweet cake, I looked about for the table of
refreshments ; it was scarcely visible until one had got accustomed
to the gloom, but there was a cut-up plum-cake upon it, and there
were cut-up oranges, and sandwiches, and biscuits, and two de-
canters that I knew very well as ornaments, but had never seen
used in all my life: one full of port, and one of sherry. Standing at
this table, I became conscious of the servile Pumblechook in a
black cloak and several yards of hatband, who was alternately
stuffing himself, and making obsequious movements to catch my
attention. The moment he succeeded, he came over to me (breath-
ing sherry and crumbs), and said in a subdued voice, 'May I,
dear sir?' and did. I then descried Mr. and Mrs. Hubble; the
last-named in a decent speechless paroxysm in a corner. We were
all going to 'follow,' and were all in course of being tied up separate-
ly (by Trabb) into ridiculous bundles.

'Which I meantersay, Pip,' Joe whispered me, as we were being
what Mr. Trabb called 'formed' in the parlour, two and two — and

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 271

it was dreadfully like a preparation for some grim kind of dance ;
'which I meantersay, sir, as I would in preference have carried
her to the church myself, along with three or four friendly ones
wot come to it with willing harts and arms, but it were considered
wot the neighbours would look down on such and would be of
opinions as it were wanting in respect.'

'Pocket-handkerchiefs out, all!' cried Mr. Trabb at this pointy
in a depressed business-like voice — 'Pocket-handkerchiefs out!
We are ready!'

So, we all put our pocket-handkerchiefs to our faces, as if our
noses were bleeding, and filed out two and two; Joe and I; Biddy
and Pumblechook; Mr. and Mrs. Hubble. The remains of my poor
sister had been brought round by the kitchen door, and it being a
point of Undertaking ceremony that the six bearers must be stifled
and blinded under a horrible black velvet housing with a white
border, the whole looked like a blind monster with twelve human
legs shuffling and blundering along under the guidance of two
keepers — the postboy and his comrade.

The neighbourhood, however, highly approved of these arrange-
ments, and we were much admired as we went through the village ;
the more youthful and vigorous part of the community making
dashes now and then to cut us off, and lying in wait to intercept us
at points of vantage. At such times the more exuberant among
them called out in an excited manner on our emergence round some
corner of expectancy, 'Here they come ! ' 'Here they are ! ' and we
were all but cheered. In this progress I was much annoyed by
the abject Pumblechook, who, being behind me, persisted all the
way, as a delicate attention, in arranging my streaming hatband,
and smoothing my cloak. My thoughts were further distracted by
the excessive pride of Mr. and Mrs. Hubble, who were surpassingly
conceited and vainglorious in being members of so distinguished
a procession.

And now the range of marshes lay clear before us, with the
sails of the ships on the river growing out of it; and we went into
the churchyard, close to the graves of my unknown parents, Philip
Pirrup, late of this parish, and Also Georgiana, Wife of the Above,

272 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

And there, my sister was laid quietly in the earth while the larks
sang high above it, and the light wind strewed it with beautiful
shadows of clouds and trees.

Of the conduct of the worldly-minded Pumblechook while this
was doing, I desire to say no more than it was all addressed to me;
and that even when those noble passages were read which reminded
humanity how it brought nothing into the world and can take
nothing out, and how it fleeth like a shadow and never continueth
long in one stay, I heard him cough a reservation of the case of a
young gentleman who came unexpectedly into large property.
When we got back, he had the hardihood to tell me that he wished
my sister could have known I had done her so much honour, and
to hint that she would have considered it reasonably purchased at
the price of her death. After that, he drank all the rest of the
sherry, and ]\Ir. Hubble drank the port, and the two talked (which
I have since observed to be customary in such cases) as if they
were quite of another race from the deceased, and were notoriously
immortal. Finally, he went away with Mr. and Mrs. Hubble — •
to make an evening of it, I felt sure, and to tell the Jolly Bargemen
that he was the founder of my fortunes and my earliest benefactor.

When they were all gone, and when Trabb and his men — but not
his boy: I looked for him — had crammed their mummery into
bags, and were gone too, the house felt wholesomer. Soon after-
wards, Biddy, Joe, and I, had a cold dinner together; but we dined
in the best parlour, not in the old kitchen, and Joe was so exceed-
ingly particular what he did with his knife and fork and the salt-
cellar and what not, that there was great restraint upon us. But
after dinner, when I made him take his pipe, and when I had
loitered with him about the forge, and when we sat down together
on the great block of stone outside it, we got on better. I noticed
chat after the funeral Joe changed his clothes so far, as to make a
com^promise between his Sunday dress and working dress: in which
the dear fellow looked natural, and like the Man he was.

He was very much pleased by my asking if I might sleep in my
own little room, and I was pleased too; for, I felt that I had done
rather a great thing in making the request. When the shadows of

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 273

evening were closing in, I took an opportunity of getting into the
garden with Biddy for a little talk.

'Biddy,' said I, 'I think you might have written to me about
these sad matters.'

'Do you, Mr. Pip?' said Biddy. 'I should have written if I had
thought that.'

'Don't suppose that I mean to be unkind, Biddy, when I say
I consider that you ought to have thought that.'

'Do you, Mr. Pip?'

She was so quiet and had such an orderly, good, and pretty way
with her, that I did not like the thought of making her cry again.
After looking a little at her downcast eyes as she walked beside me,
I gave up that point.

'I suppose it will be difficult for you to remain here now, Biddy,
dear?'

^Oh! I can't do so, Mr. Pip,' said Biddy, in a tone of regret, but
still of quiet conviction. 'I have been speaking to Mrs. Hubble, and
I am going to her to-morrow. I hope we shall be able to take some
care of Mr. Gargery, together, until he settles down.'

'How are you going to live, Biddy? If you want any mo — '

'How am I going to live?' repeated Biddy, striking in, with a
momentary flush upon her face. 'I'll tell you, Mr. Pip. I am going
to try to get the place of mistress in the new school nearly finished
here. I can be well recommended by all the neighbours, and I hope
I can be industrious and patient, and teach myself while I teach
others. You know, Mr. Pip,' pursued Biddy, with a smile, as she
raised her eyes to my face, 'the new schools are not like the old, but
I learnt a good deal from you after that time, and have had time
since then to improve.'

'I think you would always improve, Biddy, under any circum-
stances.'

'Ah! Except in my bad side of human nature,' murmured
Biddy.

It was not so much a reproach, as an irresistible thinking aloud.
Well! I thought I would give up that point too. So, I walked a
little further with Biddy, looking silently at her downcast eyes.

274 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

'I have not heard the particulars of my sister's death, Biddy.'

They are very slight, poor thing. She had been in one of her
bad states — though they had got better of late, rather than
worse — for four days, when she came out of it in the evening, just
at tea-time, and said quite plainly, ^^Joe." As she had never said
any word for a long while, I ran and fetched in Mr. Gargery from
the forge. She made signs to me that she wanted him to sit down
close to her, and wanted me to put her arms round his neck. So I
put them round his neck, and she laid her head down on his
shoulder quite content and satisfied. And so she presently said
''Joe" again, and once "Pardon," and once "Pip." And so she
never lifted her head up any more, and it was just an hour later
when we laid it down on her own bed, because we found she was
gone.'

Biddy cried; the darkening garden, and the lane, and the stars
that were coming out, were blurred in my own sight.

'Nothing was ever discovered, Biddy?'

'Nothing.'

*Do you know what is become of Orlick?'

*I should think from the color of his clothes that he is working
in the quarries.'

'Of course you have seen him then? — Why are you looking at
that dark tree in the lane?'

'I saw him there, on the night she died.'

'That was not the last time either, Biddy?'

'No; I have seen him there since we have been walking here. —
It is of no use/ said Biddy, laying her hand upon my arm, and
I was for running out, 'you know I would not deceive you ; he was
not there a minute, and he is gone.'

It revived my utmost indignation to find that she was still pur-
sued by this fellow, and I felt inveterate against him. I told her
so, and told her that I would spend any money or take any pains to
drive him out of that country. By degrees she led me into more
temperate talk, and she told me how Joe loved me, and how Joe
never complained of anything — she didn't say, of me ; she had no
need ; I knew what she meant — but ever did his duty in his way of
life, with a strong hand^ a quiet tongue, and a gentle heart.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 275

'Indeed, it would be hard to say too much for him,' said I; 'and,
Biddy, we must often speak of these things, for of course I shall be
often down here now. I am not going to leave poor Joe alone.'

Biddy said never a single word.

'Biddy, don't you hear me?'

'Yes, Mr. Pip.'

'Not to mention your calling me Mr. Pip — which appears to
me to be in bad taste, Biddy — what do you mean?'

'What do I mean?' asked Biddy, timidly.

'Biddy,' said I, in a virtuously self-asserting manner, 'I must
request to know what you mean by this?'

'By this?' said Biddy.

'Now don't echo,' I retorted. 'You used not to echo, Biddy.'

'Used not!' said Biddy. 'O Mr. Pip! Used!'

Well! I rather thought I would give up that point too. After
another silent turn in the garden, I fell back on the main position.

'Biddy,' said I, 'I made a remark respecting my coming down
here often, to see Joe, which you received with a marked silence.
Have the goodness, Biddy, to tell me why.'

'Are you quite sure, then, that you will come to see him often?'
asked Biddy, stopping in the narrow garden walk, and looking at
me under the stars with a clear and honest eye.

'Oh dear me!' said I, as I found myself compelled to give up
Biddy in despair. 'This really is a very bad side of human nature!
Don't say any more, if you please, Biddy. This shocks me very
much.'

For which cogent reason I kept Biddy at a distance during
supper, and when I went up to my own old, little room, took as
stately a leave of her as I could, in my murmuring soul, deem
reconcilable with the churchyard and the event of the day. As
often as I was restless in the night, and that was every quarter of
an hour, I reflected what an unkindness, what an injury, what an
injustice, Biddy had done me.

Early in the morning, I was to go. Early in the morning, I was
out, and looking in^ unseen, at one of the wooden windows of the
forge. There I stood^ for minutes, looking at Joe, already at work
with a glow or health and strength upon his face that made it show

276 GREAT KXPECTATIONS

as if the bright sun of the life in store for him were shining on it.

'Good-bye, dear Joel — Xo, don't wipe it off — for God's sake,
give me your blackened hand I — I shall be down soon and often.'

'Never too soon, sir.' said Joe, 'and never too often, Pip!'

Biddy was waiting for me at the kitchen door, with a mug of
new milk and a crust of bread. 'Biddy,' said I. when I gave her
my hand at parting, 'I am not angry, but I am hurt.'

'No, don't be hurt,* she pleaded quite patheticaly; 'let only me
be hurt, if I have been ungenerous.'

Once more, the mists were rising as I walked away. If they dis-
closed to me, as I suspect they did, that I should not come back,
and that Biddy was quite right, all I can say is — they were quite
right too.

CHAPTER XXXVI

Herbert and I went on from bad to worse, in the way of increas-
ing our debts, looking into our affairs, leaving Margins, and the
like exemplary transactions; and Time went on, whether or no, as
he has a way of doing: and I came of age — in fulfilment of Her-
bert's prediction, that I should do so before I knew where I was.

Herbert himself had come of age, eight months before me. As
he had nothing else than his majority to come into, the event did
not make a profound sensation in Barnard's Inn But we had
looked forward to my one-and-twentieth birthday, with a crowd of
speculations and anticipations, for we had both considered that
my guardian could hardly help saying something definite on that
occasion.

I had taken care to have it well understood in Little Britain
when my birthday was. On the day before it, I received an official
note from Wemmick, informing me that Mr. Jaggers would be glad
if I would call upon him at five in the afternoon of the auspicious
day. This convinced us that something great was to happen, and
threw me into an unusual flutter when I repaired to my guardian's
office, a model of punctuality.

In the outer office Wemmick offered me his congratulations, and

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 277

incidentally rubbed the side of his nose with a folded piece of
lissue-paper that I liked the look of. But he said nothing respect-
iig it, and motioned me with a nod into my guardian's room. It
was November, and my guardian was standing before his fire lean-
ing his back against the chimney-piece, with his hands under his
coat-tails.

'Well, Pip,' said he, 'I must call you Mr. Pip to-day. Congratu-
lations, Mr. Pip.'

We shook hands — he was always a remarkably short shaker —
and I thanked him.

'Take a chair, Mr. Pip,' said my guardian.

As I sat down, and he preserved his attitude and bent his brows
at his boots, I felt at a disadvantage, which reminded me of that
old time when I had been put upon a tombstone. The two ghastly
casts on the shelf were not far from him, and their expression was
as if they were making a stupid apoplectic attempt to attend to
the conversation.

'Now, my young friend,' my guardian began, as if I were a wit-
ness in the box, 'I am going to have a word or two with you.'

'If you please, sir.'

'What do you suppose,' said Mr. Jaggers, bending forward to
look at the ground, and then throwing his head back to look at the
ceiling, 'what do you suppose you are living at the rate of?'

'At the rate of, sir?'

'At,' repeated Mr. Jaggers, still looking at the ceiling, 'the — rate
— of?' And then looked all round the room, and paused with his
pocket-handkerchief in his hand, half way to his nose.

I had looked into my affairs so often, that I had thoroughly de'
stroyed any slight notion I might ever have had of their bearings
Reluctantly, I confessed myself quite unable to answer the ques-
tion. This reply seemed cgreeable to IMr. Jaggers, who said, 'I
thought so! ' and blew his nose with an air of satisfaction.

'Now, I have asked you a question, my friend,' said Mr. Jag-
gers. 'Have you anything to ask me?'

'Of course it would be a great relief to me to ask you several
questions, sir; but I remember your prohibition.'

'Ask one,' said Mr. Jaggers.

278 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

'Is my benefactor to be made known to me to-day?'

'No. Ask another.'

'Is that confidence to be imparted to me soon?'

'Waive that, a moment,' said Mr. Jaggers, 'and ask another.'

I looked about me, but there appeared to be now no possible
escape from the inquiry, 'Have — I — anything to receive, sir?' On
that, Mr. Jaggers said, triumphantly, 'I thought we should come to
it! ' and called to Wemmick to give him that piece of paper. Wem-
mick appeared, handed it in, and disappeared.

'Now, Mr. Pip,' said Mr. Jaggers, 'attend if you please. You
have been drawing pretty freely here; your name occurs pretty
often in Wemmick's cashbook; but you are in debt, of course?'

'I am afraid I must say yes, sir.'

'You know you must say yes; don't you?' said Mr. Jaggers.

'Yes, sir.'

'I don't ask you what you owe, because you don't know; and if
you did know, you wouldn't tell me; you would say less. Yes, yes,
my friend,' cried Mr. Jaggers, waving his forefinger to stop me, as
I made a show of protesting: 'it's likely enough that you think
you wouldn't, but you would. You'll excuse me, but I know better
than you. Now, take this piece of paper in your hand. You have
got it? Very good. Now, unfold it and tell me what it is.'

'This is a bank-note,' said I, 'for five hundred pounds.'

'That is a bank-note,' repeated Mr. Jaggers, 'for five hundred
pounds. And a very handsome sum of money too, I think. You
consider it so?'

'How could I do otherwise ! '

'Ah! But answer the question,' said Mr. Jaggers.

'Undoubtedly.'

'You consider it, undoubtedly, a handsome sum of money. Now,
that handsome sum of money, Pip, is your own. It is a present to
you on this day, in earnest of your expectations. And at the rate
of that handsome sum of money per annum, and at no higher rate,
you are to live until the donor of the whole appears. That is to
say, you will now take your money affairs entirely into your own
hands, and you will draw from Wemmick one hundred and twenty-
five pounds per quarter, until you are in communication with the

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 279

fountain-head, and no longer with the mere agent. As I have told
you before, I am the mere agent. I execute my instructions, and I
am paid for doing so. I think them injudicious, but I am not paid
for giving any opinion on their merits.'

I was beginning to express my gratitude to my benefactor for
the great liberality with which I was treated, when Mr. Jaggers
stopped me. 'I am not paid, Pip,' said he, coolly, 'to carry your
words to any one' ; and then gathered up his coat-tails, as he had
gathered up the subject, and stood frowning at his boots as if he
suspected them of designs against him.

After a pause, I hinted:

'There was a question just now, Mr. Jaggers, which you desired
me to waive for a moment. I hope I am doing nothing wrong in
asking it again?'

'What is it?' said he.

I might have known that he would never help me out; but it
took me aback to have to shape the question afresh, as if it were
quite new. 'Is it likely,' I said, after hesitating, 'that my patron,

the fountain-head you have spoken of, Mr. Jaggers, will soon '

there I delicately stopped.

'Will soon what?' asked Mr. Jaggers. 'That's no question as it
stands, you know.'

•Will soon come to London,' said I, after casting about for a
precise form of words, 'or summon me anywhere else?'

'Now here,' replied Mr. Jaggers, fixing me for the first time with
his dark deep-set eyes, 'we must revert to the evening when we
first encountered one another in your village. What did I tell you
then, Pip?'

'You told me, Mr. Jaggers, that it might be years hence when
that person appeared.'

'Just so,' said Mr. Jaggers; 'that's my answer.^

As we looked full at one another, I felt my breath come quicker
in my strong desire to get something out of him. And as I felt that
it came quicker, and as I felt that he saw that it came quicker, I
felt that I had less chance than ever of getting anything out of him.

'Do you suppose it will still be years hence, Mr. Jaggers?'

Mr. Jaggers shook his head — not in negativing the question, but

280 grp:at expectations

in altogether negativing the notion that he could anyhow be got
to answer it — and the two horrible casts of the twitched faces
looked, when my eyes strayed up to them, as if they had come to a
crisis in their suspended attention, and were going to sneeze.

'Come!' said Mr. Jaggers, w^arming the backs of his legs with
the backs of his warmed hands, 'I'll be plain with you, my friend
Pip. That's a question I must not be asked. You'll understand
that, better, when I tell you it's a question that might compromise
me. Come! I'll go a little further with you; I'll say something
more.'

He bent down so low to frown at his boots, that he was able to
rub the calves of his legs in the pause he made.

'When that person discloses,' said Mr. Jaggers, straightening
himself, 'you and that person will settle your own affairs. When
that person discloses, my part in this business will cease and de-
termine. When that person discloses, it will not be necessary for
me to know anything about it. And that's all I have got to say.'

We looked at one another until I withdrew my eyes, and looked
thoughtfully at the floor. From this last speech I derived the no-
tion that Miss Havisham, for some reason or no reason, had not
taken him into her confidence as to her designing me for Estella:
that he resented this, and felt a jealousy about it: or that he really
did object to that scheme, and would have nothing to do with it.
When I raised my eyes again, I found that he had been shrewdly
looking at me all the time, and was doing so still.

'If that is all you have to say, sir,' I remarked, 'there can be
nothing left for me to say.'

He nodded assent, and pulled out his thief-dreaded watch, and
asked me where I was going to dine? I replied at my own cham-
bers, with Herbert. As a necessary sequence, I asked him if he
would favour us with his company, and he promptly accepted the
invitation. But he insisted on walking home with me, in order that
I might make no extra preparation for him, and first he had a letter
or two to write, and (of course) had his hands to wash. So, I said
I would go into the outer office and talk to Wemmick.

The fact was, that when the five-hundred pounds had come into
my pocket, a thought had come into my head which had been often

GREAT EXPPX'TATIONS 281

there before; and it appeared to me that Wemmick was a good
person to advise with, concerning such thought.

He had already locked up his safe, and made preparations for
going home. He had left his desk, brought out his two greasy office
candlesticks and stood them in line with the snuffers on a slab near
the door, ready to be extinguished; he had raked his fire low, put
his hat and great-coat ready, and was beating himself all over the
chest with his safe-key as an athletic exercise after business.

'Mr. Wemmick,' said I, 'T want to ask your opinion. I am very
desirous to serve a friend.'

Wemmick tightened his post-office and shook his head, as if his
opinion were dead against any fatal weakness of that sort.

'This friend,' I pursued, 'is trying to get on in commercial life,
but has no money, and finds it difficult and disheartening to make
a beginning. Now, I want somehow to help him to a beginning."'

'With money down?' said Wemmick, in a tone drier than any
sawdust.

'With some money down,' I replied, for an uneasy remembrance
shot across me of that symmetrical bundle of papers at home;
'with some money down, and perhaps some anticipation of my ex-
pectations.'

'Mr. Pip,' said Wemmick, 'I should like just to run over with
you on my fingers, if you please, the names of the various bridges
up as high as Chelsea Reach. Let's see; there's London, one;
Southwark, two; Blackfriars, three; Waterloo, four; Westmin-
ster, five; Vauxhal, six.' He had checked off each bridge in its
turn, with the handle of his safe-key on the palm of his hand.
'There's as many as six, you see, to choose from.'

T don't understand you,' said I.

'Choose your bridge, Mr. Pip,' returned Wemmick, 'and take a
walk upon your bridge, and pitch your money into the Thames
over the centre arch of your bridge, and you know the end of it.
Serve a friend with it, and you may know the end of it too — but
it's a less pleasant and profitable end.'

I could have posted a newspaper in his mouth, he made it so
wide after saying this.

'This is very discouraging,' said I.

282 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

'Meant to be so,' said Wemmick.

'Then is it your opinion,' I inquired, with some little indigna-
tion, 'that a man should never '

I

' — Invest portable property in a friend?' said Wemmick. 'Cer-
tainly he should not. Unless he wants to get rid of the friend —
and then it becomes a question how much portable property it may
be worth to get rid of him.'

'And that,' said I, 'is your deliberate opinion, Mr. Wemmick?'

'That,' he returned, 'is my deliberate opinion in this office.'

'Ah!' said I, pressing him, for I thought I saw him near a loop-
hole here; 'but would that be your opinion at Walworth?'

'My Pip,' he replied with gravity. 'Walworth is one place, and
this office is another. Much as the Aged is one person, and Mr.
Jaggers is another. They must not be confounded together. My
W^alworth sentiments must be taken at Walworth; none but my
official sentiments can be taken in this office.'

'Very well,' said I, much relieved, 'then I shall look you up at
Walworth, you may depend upon it.'

'Mr. Pip,' he returned, 'you will be welcome there, in a private
and personal capacity.'

We had held this conversation in a low voice, well knowing my
guardian's ears to be the sharpest of the sharp. As he now ap-
peared in his doorway, towelling his hands, Wemmick got on his
great-coat and stood by to snuff out the candles. We all three went
into the street together, and from the door-step Wemmick turned
his way, and Mr. Jaggers and I turned ours.

I could not help wishing more than once that evening, that Mr.
Jaggers had had an Aged in Gerrard Street, or a Stinger, or a
Something, or a Somebody, to unbend his brows a little. It was an
uncomfortable consideration on a twenty-first birthday, that com-
ing of age at all seemed hardly worth while m such a guarded and
suspicious world as he made of it. He was a thousand times better
informed and cleverer than Wemmick, and yet I would a thousand
times rather have had Wemmick to dinner. And Mr. Jaggers made
not me alone intensely melancholy, because, after he was gone,
Herbert said of himself, with his eyes fixed on the fire, that he

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 283

thought he must have committed a felony and forgotten the details
of it, he felt so dejected and guilty.

CHAPTER XXXVII

Deeming Sunday the best day for taking Mr. Wemmick's Wal-
worth sentiments, I devoted the next ensuing Sunday afternoon to
a pilgrimage to the Castle. On arriving before the battlements, I
found the Union Jack flying and the drawbridge up, but unde-
terred by this show of defiance and resistance, I rang at the gate,
and was admitted in a most pacific manner by the Aged.

'My son, sir,' said the old man, after securing the drawbridge,
'rather had it in his mind that you might happen to drop in, and
he left word that he would soon be home from his afternoon's walk.
He is very regular in his walks, is my son. Very regular in every-
thing, is my son.'

I nodded at the old gentleman as Wemmick himself might have
nodded, and we went in and sat down by the fireside.

'You made acquaintance with my son, sir,' said the old man, in
his chirping way, while he warmed his hands at the blaze, 'at his
office, I expect?' I nodded 'Hah! I have heerd that my son is a
wonderful hand at his business, sir?' I nodded hard. 'Yes; so they
tell me. His business is the Law?' I nodded harder. 'Which makes
it more surprising in my son,' said the old man, 'for he was not
brought up to the Law, but to the Wine-Coopering.'

Curious to know how the old gentleman stood informed con-
cerning the reputation of Mr. Jaggers, I roared that name at him.
He threw me into the greatest confusion by laughing heartily and
replying in a very sprightly manner, 'No, to be sure; you're right.'
And to this hour I have not the faintest notion of what he meant,
or what joke he thought I had made.

As I could not sit there nodding at him perpetually, without
making some other attempt to interest him, I shouted an inquiry
whether his own calling in life had been the Wine-Coopering,' By

284< GREAT EXPECTATIONS

dint of straining that term out of myself several times and tapping
the old gentleman on the chest to associate it with him, I at last
succeeded in making my meaning understood.

'No,' said the old gentleman; 'the warehousing, the warehousing.
First, over yonder'; he appeared to mean up the chimney, but I
believe he intended to refer me to Liverpool; 'and then in the City
of London here. However, having an infirmity — for I am hard of
hearing, sir '

I expressed in pantomime the greatest astonishment.

' — Yes, hard of hearing ; having that infirmity coming upon me,
my son he went into the Law, and he took charge of me, and he by
little and little made out this elegant and beautiful property. But
returning to what you said, you know,' pursued the old man, again
laughing heartily, 'what I say is, No, to be sure; you're right.'

I was modestly wondering whether my utmost ingenuity would
have enabled me to say anything that would have amused him half
as much as this imaginary pleasantry, when I was startled by a
sudden click in the wall on one side of the chimney, and the ghost-
ly tumbling open of a little wooden flap with 'John' upon it. The
old man, following my eyes, cried with great triumph, 'My son's
come home!' and we both went out to the drawbridge.

It was worth any money to see Wemmick waving a salute to me
from the other side of the moat, when we might have shaken hands
across it with the greatest ease. The Aged was so delighted to work
the drawbridge^ that I made no offer to assist him, but stood quiet
until Wemmick had come across, and had presented me to Miss
Skiffins: a lady by whom he was accompanied.

Miss Skiffins was of a wooden appearance, and was like her es-
cort, in the post-office branch of the service. She might have been
some two or three years younger than Wemmick, and I judged her
to stand possessed of portable property. The cut of her dress from
the waist upward, both before and behind, made her figure very
like a boy's kite; and I might have pronounced her gown a little
loo decidedly orange, and her gloves a little too intensely green,
liut she seemed to be a good sort of fellow, and showed a high re-
gard for the Aged. I was not long in discovering that she was a fre-
quent visitor at the Castle; for, on our going in, and my compli-

GREAT EXPECTATIOxNS 285

meriting Wemmick on his ingenious contrivance for announcing
himself to the Aged, he begged me to give my attention for a mo-
ment to the other side of the chimney, and disappeared. Presently
another click came, and another little door tumbled open with 'Miss
Skiffins' on it; then Miss Skiffins shut up and John tumbled open;
then Miss Skiffins and John both tumbled open together, and final-
ly shut up together. On Wemmick 's return from working these me-
chanical appliances, I expressed the great admiration with which 1
regarded them, and he said, 'Well, you know, they're both pleasant
and useful to the Aged. And by George, sir, it's a thing worth men-
tioning, that of all the people who come to this gate, the secret of
those pulls is only known to the Aged, Miss Skiffins, and me!'

'And Mr. Wemmick made them,' added Miss Skiffins, 'with his
own hands out of his own head.'

While Miss Skiffins was taking off her bonnet (she retained her
green gloves during the evening as an outward and visible sign that
there was company) , Wemmick invited me to take a walk with him
round the property, and see how the island looked in wintertime.
Thinking that he did this to give me an opportunity of taking his
Walworth sentiments, I seized the opportunity as soon as we were
out of the Castle.

Having thought of the matter with care, I approached my sub-
ject as if I had never hinted at it before. I informed Wemmick
that I was anxious in behalf of Herbert Pocket, and I told him
how we had first met, and how we had fought. I glanced at Her-
bert's home, and at his character, and at his having no means but
such as he was dependent on his father for: those, uncertain and
unpunctual. I alluded to the advantages I had derived in my first
rawness and ignorance from his society, and I confessed that I
feared I had but ill repaid them, and that he might have done bet-
ter without me and my expectations. Keeping Miss Havisham in
the background at a great distance, I still hinted at the possibility
of my having competed with him in his prospects, and at the cer-
tainty of his possessing a generous soul, and being far above any
mean distrusts, retaliations, or designs. For all these reasons (I
told Wemmick), and because he was my young companion and
friend, and I had a great affection for him, I wished my own good

286 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

fortune to reflect some rays upon him, and therefore I sought ad-
vice from Wemmick's experience and knowledge of men and af-
fairs, how I could best try with my resources to help Herbert to
some present income — say of a hundred a year, to keep him in
good hope and heart — and gradually to buy him on to some small
partnership. I begged Wemmick, in conclusion, to understand that
my help must always be rendered without Herbert's knowledge or
suspicion, and that there was no one else in the world with whom I
could advise. I wound up by laying my hand upon his shoulder,
and saying 'I can't help confiding in you; though I know it must
be troublesome to you; but that is your fault; in having ever
brought me here.'

Wemmick was silent for a little while, and then said with a kind
of start. 'Well, you know, Mr. Pip, I must tell you one thing. This
is devilish good of you.'

'Say you'll help me to be good then,' said I.

'Ecod,' replied Wemmick, shaking his head, 'that's not my
trade.'

'Nor is this your trading-place,' said I.

'You are right,' he returned. 'You hit the nail on the head. Mr.
Pip, I'll put on my considering cap, and I think all you want to do
may be done by degrees. Skiffins (that's her brother) is an ac-
countant and agent. I'll look him up and go to work for you.'

'I thank you ten thousand times.'

'On the contrary,' said he, 'I thank you, for though we are strict-
ly in our private and personal capacity, still it may be mentioned
that there are Newgate cobwebs about, and it brushes them away.'

After a little further conversation to the same effect, we returned
into the Castle, where we found Miss Skiffins preparing tea. The
responsible duty of making the toast was delegated to the Aged,
and that excellent old gentleman was so intent upon it that he
seemed to be in some danger of melting his eyes. It was no nom-
inal meal that we were going to make, but a vigorous reality. The
Aged prepared such a haystack of buttered toast, that I could
scarcely see him over it as it simmered on an iron stand hooked on
to the top-bar; while Miss Skiffins brewed such a jorum of tea, that

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 287

the pig in the back premises became strongly excited, and repeat-
edly expressed his desire to participate in the entertainment.

The flag had been struck, and the gun had been fired, at the
right moment of time, and I felt as snugly cut off from the rest of
Walworth as if the moat were thirty feet wide by as many deep.
Nothing disturbed the tranquillity of the Castle, but the occasional
tumbling open of John and Miss Skiffins: which little doors were a
prey to some spasmodic infirmity that made me sympathetically
uncomfortable until I got used to it. I inferred from the method-
ical nature of Miss Skiffins's arrangements that she made tea there
every Sunday night; and I rather suspected that a classic brooch
she wore, representing the profile of an undesirable female with a
very straight nose and a very new moon, was a piece of portable
property that had been given her by Wemmick.

We ate the whole of the toast, and drank tea in proportion, and
it was delightful to see how warm and greasy we all got after it.
The Aged especially, might have passed for some clean old chief
of a savage tribe, just oiled. After a short pause of repose, Miss
Skiffins — in the absence of the little servant, who, it seemed, re-
tired to the bosom of her family on Sunday afternoons — washed
up the tea-things in a trifling lady-like amateur manner that com-
promised none of us. Then, she put on her gloves again, and we
drew round the fire, and Wemmick said, 'Now, Aged Parent, tip us
the paper.'

Wemmick explained to me while the Aged got his spectacles out,
that this was according to custom, and that it gave the old gentle-
man infinite satisfaction to read the news aloud. 'I won't offer an
apology,' said Wemmick, 'for he isn't capable of many pleasures — •
are you, Aged P.?'

'All right, John, all right,' returned the old man, seeing himself
spoken to.

'Only tip him a nod every now and then when he looks off his
paper,' said Wemmick, 'and he'll be as happy as a king. We are
all attention, Aged One.'

'All right, John, all right!' returned the cheerful old man: so
busy and so pleased, that it really was quite charming.

288 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

The Aged's reading reminded me of the classes at Mr. Wopsle's
great-aunt's, with the pleasanter pecuHarity that it seemed to come
through a keyhole. As he wanted the candles close to him, and as
he was always on the verge of putting either his head or the news-
paper into them, he required as much watching as a powder-mill.
But Wemmick was equally untiring and gentle in his vigilance, and
the Aged read on, quite unconscious of his many rescues. When-
ever he looked at us, we all expressed the greatest interest and
amazement, and nodded until he resumed again.

As Wemmick and Miss Skiffins sat side by side, and as I sat in a
shadowy corner, I observed a slow and gradual elongation of Mr.
Wemmick 's mouth, powerfully suggestive of his slowly and grad-
ually steaUng his arm round Miss Skiffins's waist. In course of
time I saw his hand appear on the other side of Miss Skiffins; but
at that moment Miss Skiffins neatly stopped him with the green
glove, unwound his arm again as if it were an article of dress and
with the greatest deliberation laid it on the table before her. Miss
Skiffins's composure while she did this was one of the most remark-
able sights I have even seen, and if I could have thought the act
consistent with abstraction of mind, I should have deemed that
Miss Skiffins performed it mechanically.

By and by, I noticed Wemmick 's arm beginning to disappear
again, and gradually fading out of view. Shortly afterwards, his
mouth began to widen again. After an interval of suspense on my
part that was quite enthralling and almost painful, I saw his hand
appear on the other side of Miss Skiffins. Instantly, Miss Skiffins
stopped it with the neatness of a placid boxer, took off that girdle
or cestus as before, and laid it on the table. Taking the table to
represent the path of virtue, I am justified in stating that during
the whole time of the Aged's reading, Wemmick's arm was stray-
ing from the path of virtue and being recalled to it by Miss Skiffins.

At last the Aged read himself into a light slumber. This was the
time for Wemmick to produce a little kettle, a tray of glasses, and a
black bottle with a porcelain-topped cork, representing some cleri-
cal dignity of a rubicund and social aspect. With the aid of these
appliances we all had something warm to drink: including the
Aged, who was soon awake again. Miss Skiffins mixed, and I ob-

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 289

served that she and Wemmick drank out of one glass. Of course I
knew better than to offer to see Miss Skiffins home, and under the
circumstances I though I had best go first: which I did, taking a
cordial leave of the Aged, and having passed a pleasant evening.

Before a week was out, I received a note from Wemmick, dated
Walworth, stating that he hoped he had made some advance in
that matter appertaining to our private and personal capacities,
and that he would be glad if I could come and see him again upon
ii. So, I went out to Walworth again, and yet again, and yet again,
and I saw him by appointment in the City several times, but never
held any communication with him on the subject in or near Little
Britain. The upshot was, that we found a worthy young merchant
or shipping-broker, not long established in business, who wanted
intelligent help, and who wanted capital, and who in due course of
time and receipt would want a partner. Between him and me, se-
cret articles were signed of which Herbert was the subject, and 1
paid him half of my five hundred pounds down, and engaged for
sundry other payments: some, to fall due at certain dates out of
my income: some contingent on my coming into my property.
Miss Skiffins's brother conducted the negotiation. Wemmick per-
vaded it throughout, but never appeared in it.

The whole business was so cleverly managed, that Herbert had
not the least suspicion of my hand being in it. I never shall forget
the radiant face with which he came home one afternoon, and told
me as a mighty piece of news, of his having fallen in with one
Clarriker (the young merchant's name), and of Clarriker's having
shown an extraordinary inclination towards him, and of his belief
that the opening had come at last. Day by day as his hopes grew
stronger and his face brighter, he must have thought me a more
and more affectionate friend, for I had the greatest difficulty in re-
straining my tears of triumph when I saw him so happy.

At length, the thing being done, and he having that day entered
Clarriker's House, and he having talked to me for a whole evening
in a flush of pleasure and success, I did really cry in good earnest
when I went to bed, to think that my expectations had done some
good to somebody.

A great event in my life, the turning point of my life, now open*-

290 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

on my view. But, before I proceed to narrate it, and before I pass
on to all the changes it involved, I must give one chapter to Es-
tella. It is not much to give to the theme that so long filled my
heart.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

If that staid old house near the Green at Richmond should ever
come to be haunted when I am dead, it will be haunted, surely, by
my ghost. O the many, many nights and days through which the
unquiet spirit within me haunted that house when Estella lived
there! Let my body be where it would, my spirit was always wan-
dering, wandering, wandering about that house.

The lady with whom Estella was placed, Mrs. Brandley by
name, was a widow, with one daughter several years older than
Estella. The mother looked young and the daughter looked old;
the mother's complexion was pink, and the daughter's was yellow;
the mother set up for frivolity, and the daughter for theology.
They were in what is called a good position, and visited, and were
visited by, numbers of people. Little, if any, community of feeling
subsisted between them and Estella, but the understanding was es-
tablished that they were necessary to her, and that she was neces-
sary to them. Mrs. Brandley had been a friend of Miss Havis-
ham's before the time of her seclusion.

In Mrs. Brandley's house and out of Mrs. Brandley's house, I
suffered every kind and degree of torture that Estella could cause
me. The nature of my relations with her, which placed me on
terms of familiarity without placing me on terms of favour, con-
duced to my distraction. She made use of me to tease other ad-
mirers, and she turned the very familiarity between herself and
me, to the account of putting a constant slight on my devotion to
her. If I had been her secretary, steward, half-brother, poor re-
lation— if I had been a younger brother of her appointed husband
— I could not have seemed to myself, further from my hopes when
I was nearest to her. The privilege of calling her by her name and

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 291

hearing her call me by mine, became under the circumstances an
aggravation of my trials ; and while I think it likely that it almost
maddened her other lovers, I knew too certainly that it almost
maddened me.

She had admirers without end. No doubt my jealousy made an
admirer of every one who went near her ; but there were more ':han
enough of them without that.

I saw her often at Richmond, I heard of her often in town, and I
used often to take her and the Brandleys on the water; there were
pic-nics, fete days, plays, operas, concerts, parties, all sorts of
pleasures, through which I pursued her — and they were all miseries
to me. I never had one hour's happiness in her society, and yet my
mind all round the four-and-twenty hours was harping on the hap-
piness of having her with me unto death.

Throughout this part of our intercourse — and it lasted, as will
presently be seen, for what I then thought a long time — she habit-
ually reverted to that tone which expressed that our association
was forced upon us. There were other times when she would come
to a sudden check in this tone and in all her many tones, and
would seem to pity me.

Tip, Pip,' she said one evening, coming to such a check, when
we sat apart at a darkening window of the house in Richmond;
^will you never take warning?'

'Of what?'

'Of me.'

Warning not to be attracted by you, do you mean, Estella?'

'Do I mean? If you don't know what I mean, you are blind.'

I should have replied that Love was commonly reputed blind,
but for the reason that I always was restrained — and this was not
the least of my miseries — by a feeling that it was ungenerous to
press myself upon her, when she knew that she could not choose
but obey Miss Havisham. My dread always was, that this knowl-
edge on her part laid me under a heavy disadvantage with her
pride, and made me the subject of a rebellious struggle in her
bosom.

At any rate,' said I, 'I have no v/arning given me just now, for
you wrote to rfie to come to you, this time.'

292 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

'That's true/ said Estella, with a cold careless smile that always
chilled me.

After looking at the twilight without, for a little while, she went
on to say:

'The time has come round when Miss Havisham wishes to have
me for a day at Satis. You are to take me there, and bring me
back, if you will. She would rather I did not travel alone, and ob-
jects to receiving my maid, for she has a sensitive horror of being
talked of by such people. Can you take me?'

'Can I take you, Estella!'

'You can then? The day after to-morrow, if you please. You
are to pay all charges out of my purse. You hear the condition of
your going?'

'And must obey,' said I.

This was all the preparation I received for that visit, or for
others like it: Miss Havisham never wrote to me, nor had I ever so
much as seen her handwriting. We went down on the next day
but one, and we found her in the room where I had first beheld
her, and it is needless to add that there was no change in Satis
House.

She was even more dreadfully fond of Estella than she had been
when I last saw them together; I repeat the word advisedly, for
there was something positively dreadful in the energy of her looks
and embraces. She hung upon Estella's beauty, hung upon her
words, hung upon her gestures, and sat mumbling her own tremb-
ling fingers while she looked at her, as though she were devouring
the beautiful creature she had reared.

From Estella she looked at me, with a searching glance that
seemed to pry into my heart and probe its wounds. 'How does she
use you, Pip, how does she use you?' she asked me again, with her
witch-like eagerness, even in Estella's hearing. But, when we sat
by her flickering fire at night, she was most weird; for then, keep-
ing Estella's hand drawn through her arm and clutched in her own
hand, she extorted from her by dint of referring back to what f2s-
tella had told her in her regular letters, the names and conditions
of the men whom she had fascinated; and as Miss Havisham dwelt
upon this roll, with the intensity of a mind mortally hurt and di-

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 293

seased, she sat with her other hand on her crutch stick, and her
chin on that, and her wan bright eyes glaring at me, a very spectre.

I saw in this, wretched though it made me, and bitter the sense
of dependence, even of degradation, that it awakened — I saw in
this, that Estella was set to wreak Miss Havisham's revenge on
men, and that she was not to be given to me until she had gratified
it for a term. I saw in this, a reason for her being beforehand as-
signed to me. Sending her out to attract and torment and do mis-
chief, Miss Havisham sent her with the malicious assurance that
she was beyond the reach of all admirers, and that all who staked
upon that cast were secured to lose. I saw in this, that I, too, was
tormented by a perversion of ingenuity, even while the prize was
reserved for me. I saw in this, the reason for my being staved ofi
so long, and the reason for my late guardian's declining to commit
himself to the formal knowledge of such a scheme. In a word, 1
saw in this. Miss Havisham as I had her then and there before my
eyes, and always had had her before my eyes; and I saw in this,
the distinct shadow of the darkened and unhealthy house in which
her life was hidden from the sun.

The candles that lighted that room of hers were placed in
sconces on the wail. They were high from the ground, and they
burnt with the steady dulness of artificial light in air that is seldom
renewed. As I looked round at them, and at the pale gloom they
made, and at the stopped clock, and at the withered articles of
bridal dress upon the table and the ground, and at her own awful
figure with its ghostly reflection thrown large by the fire upon the
ceiling and the wall, I saw in everything the construction that my
mind had come to, repeated and thrown back to me. My thoughts
passed into the great room across the landing where the table was
spread, and I saw it written, as it were, in the falls of the cobwebs
from the centre-piece, in the crawlings of the spiders on the cloth,
in the tracks of the mice as they betook their little quickened
hearts behind the panels, and in the gropings and pausings of the
beetles on the floor.

It happened on the occasion of this visit that some sharp words
arose between Estella and Miss Havisham. It was the first time I
had ever seen them opposed.

294 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

We were seated by the fire, as just now described, and Miss
Havisham still had Estella's arm drawn through her own, and still
clutched Estella's hand in hers, when Estella gradually began to
detach herself. She had shewn a proud impatience more than once
before, and had rather endured that fierce affection than accepted
or returned it.

'What! ' said Miss Havisham, flashing her eyes upon it, 'are you
tired of me?'

'Only a little tired of myself,' replied Estella, disengaging her
arm, and moving to the great chimney-piece, where she stood look-
ing down at the fire.

'Speak the truth, you ingrate!' cried Miss Havisham, passion-
ately striking her stick upon the floor; 'you are tired of me.'

Estella looked at her with perfect composure, and again looked
down at the fire. Her graceful figure and her beautiful face ex-
pressed a self-possessed indifference to the wild heat of the other,
that was almost cruel.

'You stock and stone!' exclaimed Miss Havisham. 'You cold,
cold heart!'

'What!' said Estella, preserving her attitude of indifference as
she leaned against the great chimney-piece and only moving her
eyes; 'do you reproach me for being cold? You?'

'Are you not?' was the fierce retort.

'You should know,' said Estella. 'I am what you have made me.
Take all the praise, take all the blame ; take all the success, take all
the failure; in short, take me.'

'Oh, look at her, look at her!' cried Miss Havisham, bitterly;
'Look at her, so hard and thankless, on the hearth where she was
reared! Where I took her into this wretched breast when it was
first bleeding from its stabs, and where I have lavished years of
tenderness upon her ! '

'At least I was no party to the compact,' said Estella, 'for if I
could walk and speak, when it was made, it was as much as I
could do. But what would you have? You have been very good to
me, and I owe everything to you. What would you have?'

'Love,' replied the other.

'You have it.'

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 295

'I have not,' said Miss Havisham.

'Mother by adoption,' retorted Estella, never departing from the
easy grace of her attitude, never raising her voice as the other
did, never yielding either to anger or tenderness, 'Mother by adop-
tion, I have said that I owe everything to you. All I possess is
freely yours. All that you have given me, is at your command to
have again. Beyond that, I have nothing. And if you ask me to
give you what you never gave me, my gratitude and duty cannot
do impossibilities.'

'Did I never give her, love!' cried Miss Havisham, turning wild-
ly to me. 'Did I never give her a burning love, inseparable from
jealousy at all times, and from sharp pain, while she speaks thus
to me! Let her call me mad, let her call me mad! '

'Why should I call you mad,' returned Estella, 'I, of all people?
Does any one live, who knows what set purposes you have, half as
well as I do? Does any one live, who knows what a steady memory
you have, half as well as I do? I who have sat on this same hearth
on the little stool that is even now beside you there, learning your
lessons and looking up into your face, when your face was strange
and frightened me ! '

'Soon forgotten!' moaned Miss Havisham. 'Times soon for-
gotten!'

'No, not forgotten,' retorted Estella. 'Not forgotten, but treas-
ured up in my memory. When have you found me false to your
teaching? When have you found me unmindful of your lessons?
When have you found me giving admission here,' she touched her
bosom with her hand, 'to anything that you excluded? Be just
to me.'

'So proud, so proud! ' moaned Miss Havisham, pushing away her
grey hair with both her hands.

'Who taught me to be proud?' returned Estella. 'Who praised
me when I learnt my lesson?'

'So hard, so hard!' moaned Miss Havisham, with her former
action.

'Who taught me to be hard?' returned Estella. 'Who praised me
when I learnt my lesson?'

'But to be proud and hard to me!' Miss Havisham quite

296 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

shrieked, as she stretched out her arms. 'Estella, Estella, Estella,
to be proud and hard to me!*

Estella looked at her for a moment with a kind of calm wonder,
but was not otherwise disturbed; when the moment was past, she
looked down at the fire again.

'I cannot think,' said Estella, raising her eyes after a silence,
'why you should be so unreasonable when I come to see you after
a separation. I have never forgotten your wrongs and their causes.
I have never been unfaithful to you or your schooling. I have
never shown any weakness that I can charge myself with.'

'Would it be weakness to return my love?' exclaimed Miss Havi-
sham. 'But yes, yes, she would call it so!'

'I begin to think,' said Estella, in a musing way, after another
moment of calm wonder, 'that I almost understand how this comes
about. If you had brought up your adopted daughter wholly in
the dark confinement of these rooms, and had never let her know
that there was such a thing as the daylight by which she has never
once seen your face — if you had done that, and then, for a pur-
pose, had wanted her to understand the daylight and know all
about it, you would have been disappointed and angry?'

Miss Havisham, with her head in her hands, sat making a low
moaning, and swaying herself on her chair, but gave no answer

'Or,' said Estella, ' — which is a nearer case — if you had taught
her, from the dawn of her intelligence, with your utmost energy
and might, that there was such a thing as daylight, but that it was
made to be her enemy and destroyer, and she must always turn
against it, for it had blighted you and would else blight her; — if
you had done this, and then, for a purpose, had wanted her to take
naturally to the daylight and she could not do it, you would have
been disappointed and angry?'

Miss Havisham sat listening (or it seemed so, for I could not see
her face), but still made no answer.

'So,' said Estella, 'I must be taken as I have been made. The
success is not mine, the failure is not mine, but the two together
make me.'

Miss Havisham had settled down, I hardly knew how, upon the
floor, among the faded bridal relics with which it was strewn. I

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 297

took advantage of the moment — I had sought one from the first —
to leave the room, after beseeching Estella's attention to her with
a movement of my hand. When I left, Estella was yet standing by
the great chimney-piece, just as she had stood throughout. Miss
Havisham's grey hair was all adrift upon the ground, among the
other bridal wrecks, and was a miserable sight to see.

It was with a depressed heart that I walked in the starlight for
an hour and more, about the court-yard, and about the brewery,
and about the ruined garden. When I at last took courage to re-
turn to the room, I found Estella sitting at Miss Havisham's knee,
taking up some stitches in one of those old articles of dress that
were dropping to pieces, and of which I have often been reminded
since by the faded tatters of old banners that I have seen hanging
up in cathedrals. Afterwards, Estella and I played at cards, as of
yore — only we were skilful now, and played French games — and so
the evening wore away, and I went to bed.

I lay in that separate building across the courtyard. It was the
first time I had ever lain down to rest in Satis House, and sleep
refused to come near me. A thousand ^liss Havishams haunted
me. She was on this side of my pillow, on that, at the head of the
bed, at the foot, behind the half-opened door of the dressing-
room, in the dressing-room, in the room overhead, in the room be-
neath— everywhere. At last, when the night was slow to creep on
towards two o'clock, I felt that I absolutely could no longer bear
the place as a place to lie down in, and that I must get up. 1
therefore got up and put on my clothes, and went out across the
yard into the long stone passage, designing to gain the outer court-
yard and walk there for the relief of my mind. But, I was no
sooner in the passage than I extinguished my candle; for, I saw
Miss Havisham going along it in a ghostl}^ manner, making a low
cry. I followed her at a distance, and saw her go up the staircase.
She carried a bare candle in her hand, which she had probably
taken from one of the sconces in her own room, and was a most
unearthly object by its light. Standing at the bottom of the stair-
case, I felt the mildewed air of the feast-chamber, without seeing
her open the door, and I heard her walking there, and so across
into her own room, and so across again into that, never ceasing the

298 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

low cry. After a time, I tried in the dark both to get out and go
back, but I could do neither until some streaks of day strayed in
and showed me where to lay my hands. During the whole inter-
val, whenever I went to the bottom of the staircase, I heard her
footstep, saw her candle pass above, and heard her ceaseless low
cry.

Before we left the next day, there was no revival of the differ-
ence between her and Estella, nor was it ever revived on any simi-
lar occasion ; and there were four similar occasions, to the best of
my remembrance. Nor, did Miss Havisham's manner toward Es-
tella in anywise change, except that I believed it to have some-
thing like fear infused among its former characteristics.

It is impossible to turn this leaf of my life without putting Bent-
ley Drummle's name upon it; or I would, very gladly.

On a certain occasion when the Finches were assembled in force,
and when good feeling was being promoted in the usual manner by
nobody's agreeing with anybody else, the presiding Finch called
the Grove to order, forasmuch as Mr. Drummle had not yet
toasted a lady; which, according to the solemn constitution of the
society, it was the brute's turn to do that day. I thought I saw
him leer in an ugly way at me while the decanters were going
round, but as there was no love lost between us, that might easily
be. What was my indignant surprise when he called upon the
company to pledge him to 'Estella!'

'Estella who?' said I.

'Never you mind,' retorted Drummle.

'Estella of where?' said I. 'You are bound to say of where/
Which he was, as a Finch.

'Of Richmond, gentlemen,' said Drummle, putting me out of the
question, 'and a peerless beauty.'

Much he knew about peerless beauties, a mean miserable idiot !
I whispered Herbert.

'I know that lady,' said Herbert, across the table, when the
toast had been honoured.

^Do you?' said Drummle.

'And so do I,' I added with a scarlet face.

'Do you?' said Drummle. 'Oh, Lord!'

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 299

This was the only retort — except glass or crockery — that the
heavy creature was capable of making; but, I became as highly
incensed by it as if it had been barbed with wit, and I immediately
rose in my place and said that I could not but regard it as being
like the honourable Finch's impudence to come down to that Grove
— we always talked about coming down to that Grove, as a neat
ParHamentary turn of expression — down to that Grove, proposing
a lady of whom he knew nothing. Mr. Drummle upon this, start-
ing up, demanded what I meant by that? Whereupon, I made
him the extreme reply that I believed he knew where I was to be
found.

Whether it was possible in a Christian country to get on with-
out blood, after this, was a question on which the Finches were
divided. The debate upon it grew so lively, indeed, that at least
six more honourable members told six more, during the discussion,
that they believed they knew where they were to be found. How-
ever, it was decided at last (the Grove being a Court of Honour)
that if Mr. Drummle would bring never so slight a certificate from
the lady, importing that he had the honour of her acquaintance,
Mr. Pip must express his regret, as a gentleman and a Finch, for
'having been betrayed into a warmth which.' Next day was ap-
pointed for the production (lest our honour should take cold from
delay), the next day Drummle appeared with a polite little avowal
in Estella's hand, that she had had the honour of dancing with him
several times. This left me no course but to regret that I had been
'betrayed into a warmth which,' and on the whole to repudiate,
as untenable, the idea that I was to be found anywhere. Drum-
mle and I then sat snorting at one another for an hour, while the
Grove engaged in indiscriminate contradiction, and finally the
promotion of good feeling was declared to have gone ahead at an
amazing rate.

I tell this lightly, but it was no light thing to me. For, I can-
not adequately express what pain it gave me to think that Estella
should show any favour to a contemptible, clumsy, sulky booby,
so very far below the average. To the present moment, I believe
it to have been referable to some pure fire of generosity and dis-
interestedness in my love for her, that I could not endure the

300 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

thought of her stooping to that hound. No doubt 1 should have
been miserable whomsoever she had favoured ; but a worthier ob-
ject would have caused me a different kind and degree of distress.

It was easy for me to find out, and I did soon find out, that
Drummle had begun to follow her closely, and that she allowed
him to do it. A little while, and he was always in pursuit of her^
and he and I crossed one another every day. He held on, in a dull
persistent way, and Estella held him on ; now with encouragement,
now with discouragement, now almost flattering him, now openly
despising him, now knowing him very well, now scarcely remem-
bering who he was.

The Spider, as Mr. Jaggers had called him, was used to lying in
wait, however, and had the patience of his tribe. Added to that,
he had a blockhead confidence in his money and in his family great-
ness, which sometimes did him good service — almost taking the
place of concentration and determined purpose. So, the Spider,
doggedly watched Estella, outwatched many brighter insects, and
would often uncoil himself and drop at the right nick of time.

At a certain Assembly Ball at Richmond (there used to be As-
sembly Balls at most places then), where Estella had outshone all
other' beauties, this blundering Drummle so hung about her, and
with so much toleration on her part, that I resolved to speak to
her concerning him. I took the next opportunity: which was when
she was waiting for Mrs. Brandley to take her home, and was sit-
ting apart among some flowers, ready to go. I was with her, for
I almost always accompanied them to and from such places.

Wre you tired Estella?'

'Rather, Fip.'

'You should be.'

'Say, rather, I should not be; for I have my letter to Satis House,
to write, before I go to sleep.'

'Recounting to-night's triumph?' said I. 'Surely a very poor one,
Estella.'

'What do you mean? I didn't know there had been any.'

'Estella,' said I, 'do look at that fellow in the corner yonder, who
is looking over here at us.'

GRKAT EXPECTATIONS 301

'Why should I look at him?' returned Estella, with her eyes on
me instead. 'What is there in that fellow in the corner yonder —
to use your words — that I need look at?'

'Indeed, that is the very question I want to ask you,' said I. 'For
he has been hovering about you all night.'

'Moths, and all sorts of ugly creatures,' replied Estella, with a
glance toward him, 'hover about a lighted candle. Can the candle
help it?'

'No,' I returned: 'but cannot the Estella help it?'

'Well!' said she, laughing after a moment, 'perhaps. Yes. Any-
thing you like.'

'But, Estella, do hear me speak. It makes me wretched thai
you should encourage a man so generally despised as Drummle.
You know he is despised.'

'Well?' said she.

'You know he is as ungainly within as without. A deficient, ill-
tempered, lowering, stupid fellow.'

'Well?' said she.

'You know he has nothing to recommend him but money, and a
ridiculous roll of addle-headed predecessors; now, don't you?'

'Well?' said she again; and each time she said it, she opened her
lovely eyes the wider.

To overcome the difficulty of getting past that monosyllable, I
took it from her, and said, repeating it with emphasis, 'Well! Then,
that is why it makes me wretched.'

Now, if I could have believed that she favoured Drummle with
any idea of making me — me — wretched, I should have been in bet-
ter heart about it; but in that habitual way of hers, she put me
so entirely out of the question, that I could believe nothing of the
kind.

'Pip,' said Estella, casting her glance over the room, 'don't be
foolish about its effect on you. It may have its effect on others,
and may be meant to have. It's not worth discussing.'

'Yes it is,' said I, 'because I cannot bear that people should say,
"she throws away her grace and attractions on a mere boor, the
lowest in the crowd." '

302 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

'I can bear it/ said Estella.

'Oh! don't be so proud, Estella, and so inflexible.'

'Call me proud and inflexible in this breath!' said Estella, open-
ing her hands. 'And in his last breath reproached me for stoop-
ing to a boor!'

'There is no doubt you do,' said I, something hurriedly, 'for I
have seen you give him looks and smiles this very night, such as
you never give to — me.'

'Do you want me then,' said Estella, turning suddenly with a
fixed and serious, if not angry look, 'to deceive and entrap you?'

'Do you deceive and entrap him, Estella?'

'Yes, and many others — all of them but you. Here is Mrs.
Brandley. I'll say no more.'

And now that I have given the one chapter to the theme that so
filled my heart and so often made it ache and ache again, I pass
on, unhindered, to the event that had impended over me longer
yet; the event that had begun to be prepared for, before I knew
that the world held Estella, and in the days when her baby intelli-
gence was receiving its first distortions from Miss Havisham's
wasting hands.

In the Eastern story, the heavy slab that was to fall on the bed
of state in the flush of conquest was slowly wrought out of the
quarry, the tunnel for the rope to hold it in its place was slowly
carried through the leagues of rock, the slab was slowly raised and
fitted in the roof, the rope was rove to it, and slowly taken through
the miles of hollow to the great iron ring. All being made ready
with much labour, and the hour come, the sultan was aroused in
the dead of the night, and the sharpened axe that was to sever the
rope from the great iron ring was put into his hand, and he struck
with it, and the rope parted and rushed away, and the ceiling fell.
So, in my case; all the work, near and afar, that tended to the end,
had been accomplished; and in an instant the blow was struck,
and the roof of my stronghold dropped upon me.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 803

CHAPTER XXXIX

I WAS three-and-twenty years of age. Not another word had I
heard to enlighten me on the subject of my expectations, and my
twenty- third birthday was a week gone. We had left Barnard's
Inn more than a year, and lived in the Temple. Our chambers
were in Garden Court, down by the river.

Mr. Pocket and I had for some time parted company as to our
original relations, though we continued on the best terms. Notwith-
standing my inability to settle to anything — which I hope arose
out of the restless and incomplete tenure on which I held my means
— I had a taste for reading, and read regularly so many hours a
day. That matter of Herbert's was still progressing, and every-
thing with me was as I have brought it down to the close of the
last preceding chapter.

Business had taken Herbert on a journey to Marseilles. I was
alone, and had a dull sense of being alone. Dispirited and anxious,
long hoping that to-morrow or next week would clear my way, and
long disappointed, I sadly missed the cheerful face and ready re-
sponse of my friend.

It was wretched weather; stormy and wet, stormy and wet;
mud, mud, mud, deep in all the streets. Day after day, a vast
heavy veil had been driving over London from the East, and it
drove still, as if in the East there were an eternity of cloud and
wind. So furious had been the gusts, that high buildings in town
had had the lead stripped off their roofs ; and in the country, trees
had been torn up, and sails of windmills carried away; and gloomy
accounts had come in from the coast of shipwreck and death. Viol-
ent blasts of rain had accompanied these rages of wind, and the
day just closed as I sat down to read had been the worst of all.

Alterations have been made in that part of the Temple since
that time, and it has not now so lonely a character as it had then,
nor is it so exposed to the river. We lived at the top of the last
house, and the wind rushing up the river shook the house that

304 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

night, like discharges of cannon, or breakings of a sea. When the
rain came with it and dashed against the windows, I thought, rais-
ing my eyes to them as they rocked, that I might have fancied my-
self in a storm-beaten lighthouse. Occasionally, the smoke came
rolling down the chimney as though it could not bear to go out in-
to such a night; and when I set the doors open and looked down
the staircase, the staircase lamps were blown out; and when I
shaded my face with my hands and looked through the black win-
dows (opening them ever so little, was out of the question in the
teeth of such wind and rain) I saw that the lamps in the court
were blown out, and that the lamps on the bridges and the shores
were shuddering, and that the coal fires in barges on the river were
being carried away before the wind like red-hot splashes in the
rain.

I read with my watch upon the table, purposing to close my
book at eleven o'clock. As I shut it, Saint Paul's, and all the many
church-clocks in the City — some leading, some accompanying
some following — struck that hour. The sound was curiously flawed
by the wind; and I was listening, and thinking how the wind as-
sailed and tore it, when I heard a footstep on the stair.

What nervous folly made me start, and awfully connect it with
the footstep of my dead sister, matters not. It was past in a mo-
ment, and I listened again, and heard the footstep stumble in com-
ing on. Remembering then, that the staircase-lights were blown
out, I took up my reading-lamp and went to the stairhead.
Whoever was below had stopped on seeing my lamp, for all was
quiet.

'There is some one down there, is there not?' I called out, look-
ing down.

'Yes,' said a voice from the darkness beneath.

'What floor do you want?'

The top. Mr. Pip.'

That is my name. — There is nothing the matter?'

'Nothing the matter,' returned the voice. And the man came on.

I stood with my lamp held out over the stair-rail and he came
slowly within its light. It was a shaded lamp, to shine upon a book,
and its circle of light was very contracted ; so that he was in it for

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 305

a mere instant, and then out of it. In the instant I had seen a face
that was strange to me, looking up with an incomprehensible air of
Ijeing touched and pleased by the sight of me.

Moving the lamp as the man moved, I made out that he was
substantially dressed, but roughly; like a voyager by sea. That
he had long iron-grey hair. That his age was about sixty. That he
was a muscular man, strong on his legs, and that he was browned
and hardened by exposure to weather. As he ascended the last
stair or two, and the light of my lamp included us both, I saw, with
a stupid kind of amazement, that he was holding out both his
hands to me.

Tray what is your business?' I asked him.

'My business?' he reapeated, pausing. 'Ah! Yes. I will explain
my business, by your leave.'

*Do you wish to come in?'

'Yes,' he replied; 'I wish to come in Master.'

I had asked him the question inhospitably enough, for I re-
sented the sort of bright and gratified recognition that still shone
in his face. I resented it, because it seemed to imply that he ex-
pected me to respond to it. But, I took him into the room I had
just left, and, having set the lamp on the table, asked him as civ-
illy as I could to explain himself.

He looked about him with the strangest air — an air of wonder-
ing pleasure, as if he had some part in the things he admired — and
he pulled off a rough outer coat, and his hat. Then, I saw that his
head was furrowed and bald, and that the long iron-grey hair grew
only on its sides. But, I saw nothing that in the least explained
him. On the contrary, I saw him next moment, once more hold-
ing out both his hands to me.

'What do you mean?' said I, half suspecting him to be mad.

He stopped in his looking at me, and slowly rubbed his right
hand over his head. 'It's disappointing to a man,' he said, in a
coarse broken voice, 'arter having looked for'ard so distant, and
come so fur; but you're not to blame for that — neither on us is to
blame for that. I'll speak in half a minute. Give me half a min-
ute, please.'

He sat down on a chair that stood before the fire, and covered

306 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

}iis forehead with his large brown veinous hands. I looked at him
attentively then, and recoiled a Httle from him; but I did not
know him.

There's no one nigh,' said he, looking over his shoulder; 'is
there?'

Why do you, a stranger coming into my rooms at this time of
the night, ask that question?' said I.

'You're a game one,' he returned, shaking his head at me with a
deliberate affection, at once most unintelligible and most exasper-
ating; 'I'm glad you've grow'd up, a game one! But don't catch
hold of me. You'd be sorry arterwards to have done it.'

I relinquished the intention he had detected, for I knew him!
Even yet I could not recall a single feature, but I knew him! If
the wind and the rain had driven away the intervening years, had
scattered all the intervening objects, had swept us to the church-
yard where we first stood face to face on such different levels, I
could not have known my convict more distinctly than I knew him
now, as he sat in the chair before the fire. No need to take a file
from his pocket and show it to me ; no need to take the handker-
chief from his neck and twist it round his head; no need to hug
himself with both his arms, and take a shivering turn across the
room, looking back at me for recognition. I knew him before he
gave me one of those aids, though, a moment before, I had not been
conscious of remotely suspecting his identity.

He came back to where I stood, and again held out both his
hands. Not knowing what to do — for, in my astonishment I had
lost my self-possession — I reluctantly gave him my hands. He
grasped them heartily, raised them to his lips, kissed them, and
still held them.

'You acted nobly, my boy,' said he. 'Noble Pip! And I have
never forgot it ! '

At a change in his manner as if he were even going to embrace
me, I laid a hand upon his breast and put him away.

'Stay!' said I. 'Keep off! If you are grateful to me for what
I did when I was a little child, I hope you have shown your grat-
itude by mending your way of life. If you have come here to
thank me, it was not necessary. Still, however, you have found me

r

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 307

out, there must be something good in the feeling that has brought
you here, and I will not repulse you ; but surely you must under-
stand—I—'

My attention was so attracted by the singularity of his fixed
look at me, that the words died away on my tongue.

'You was a-saying,' he observed, when we had confronted one
another in silence, 'that surely I must understand. What, surely
must I understand?'

'That I cannot wish to renew that chance intercourse with you
of long ago, under these different circumstances. I am glad to
believe you have repented and recovered yourself. I am glad to
tell you so. I am glad that, thinking I deserve to be thanked, you
have come to thank me. But our ways are different ways, none the
less. You are wet, and you look weary. Will you drink something
before you go?'

He had replaced his neckerchief loosely, and had stood, keenly
observant of me, biting a long end of it. 'I think,' he answered,
still with the end of his mouth and still observant of me, 'that
I will drink (I thank you) afore I go.'

There was a tray ready on a side- table. I brought it to the table
near the fire, and asked him what he would have? He touched one
of the bottles without looking at it or speaking, and I made him
some hot rum-and-water. I tried to keep my hand steady while I
did so, but his look at me as he leaned back in his chair with the
long draggled end of his neckerchief between his teeth — evidently
forgotten — made my hand very difficult to master. When at last
I put the glass to him, I saw with amazement that his eyes were
full of tears.

Up to this time I had remained standing, not to disguise that I
wished him gone. But I was softened by the softened aspect of
the man, and felt a touch of reproach. 'I hope,' said I, hurriedly
putting something into a glass for myself, and drawing a chair ta
the table, 'that you will not think I spoke harshly to you just now.
I had no intention of doing it, and I am sorry for it if I did. I
wish you well, and happy!'

As I put my glass to my lips, he glanced with surprise at the
end of his neckerchief, dropping from his mouth when he opened

308 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

ft, and stretched out his hand. I gave him mine, and then he drank,
and drew his sleeve across his eyes and forehead.

'How are you living?' I asked him.

'I've been a sheep-farmer, stock-breeder, other trades besides,
away in the new world,' said he: 'many a thousand miles of stormy
water off from this.'

'I hope you have done well?'

'I've done wonderful well. There's others went out alonger me
as has done well too, but no man has done nigh as well as me. I'm
famous for it.'

*I'm glad to hear it.'

*I hope to hear you say so, my dear boy.'

Without stopping to try to understand those words or the tone
in which they were spoken, I turned off to a point that had just
come into my mind.

'Have you ever seen a messenger you once sent to me,' I in-
quired, 'since he undertook that trust?'

'Never set eyes upon him. I warn't likely to it.'

'hie came faithfully, and he brought me the two one-pound
QOtes 1 was a DOor boy then, as you know, and to a poor boy they
were a little fortune. But, like you, I have done well since, and you
must let me pay them back. You car put them to some other poor
boy's use.' I took ou: my purse.

He watched me as I laid my purse upon the table and opened it,
and he watched me as I separated two one-pound notes from its
contents. They were clean and new, and I spread them out and
handed them over to him. Still watching me, he laid them one
upon the other, folded them long-wise, gave them a twist, set fire
to them at the lamp, and dropped the ashes into the tray.

'May I make so bold,' he said then, with a smile that was like
a frown, and with a frown that was like a smile, 'as ask you how
you have done well, since you and me was out on them lone shiver-
ing marshes?'

'How?'

'Ahi'

He emptied his glass, got up, and stood at the side of the fire
with his heavy brown hand on the mantel-shelf. He put a foot up

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 309

to the bars, to dry and warm it, and the wet boot began to steam;
but, he neither looked at it, nor at the fire, but steadily looked at
me. It was only now that I began to tremble.

When my lips had parted, and had shaped some words that were
without sound, I forced myself to tell him (though I could not do
it distinctly), that I had been chosen to succeed some property.

'Might a mere warmint ask what property?' said he.

I faltered, 'I don't know.'

'Might a mere warmint ask whose property?' said he.

I faltered again, 'I don't know.'

'Could I make a guess, I wonder,' said the Convict 'at your in-
come since you come of age! As to the first figure, now. Five?'

With my heart beating like a heavy hammer of disordered ac-
tion, I rose out of my chair, and stood with my hand upon the
back of it, looking wildly at him.

'Concerning a guardian,' he went on. 'There ought to have been
some guardian or such-like, while you was a minor. Some lawyer,
maybe. As to the first letter of that lawyer's name, now. Would
it be J?'

All the truth of my position came flashing on me; and its dis-
appointments, dangers, disgraces, consequences of all kinds, rushed
in in such a multitude that I was borne down by them and had to
struggle for every breath I drew. 'Put it,' he resumed, 'as the em-
ployer of that lawyer whose name begun with a J, and might be
Jaggers — put it as he had come over sea to Portsmouth, and had
landed there, and had wanted to come on to you. "However, you
have found me out," you says just now. Well! however did I find
you out? Why, I wrote from Portsmouth to a person in London, for
particulars of your address. That person's name? Why, Wemmick.*

I could not have spoken one word, though it had been to save
my life. I stood, with a hand on the chair-back and a hand on my
breast, where I seemed to be suffocating — I stood so, looking wild-
ly at him, until I grasped at the chair, when the room began to
lurge and turn. He caught me, drew me to the sofa, put me up

gainst the cushions, and bent on one knee before me: bringing
the face that I now well remembered, and that I shuddered at,
^ery near to mine.

310 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

'Yes, Pip, dear boy, I've made a gentleman on you! It's me wot
has done it! I swore that time, sure as ever I earned a guinea,
that guinea should go to you. I swore arterwards, sure as ever I
spec'lated and got rich, you should get rich. I lived rough, that
you should live smooth ; I worked hard that you should be above
work. What odds, dear boy? Do I tell it fur you to feel a obliga-
tion? Not a bit. I tell it, fur you to know as that there hunted
dunghill dog wot you kep life in, got his head so high that he
could make a gentleman — and, Pip, you're him!'

The abhorrence in which I held the man, the dread I had of him,
the repugnance with which I shrank from him, could not have
been exceeded if he had been some terrible beast.

Took'ee here, Pip. 'I'm your second father. You're my son —
more to me nor any son. I've put away money, only for you to
spend. When I was a hired-out shepherd in a solitary hut, not
seeing no faces but the faces of sheep till I half forgot wot men's
and women's faces was like, I see yourn. I drops my knife many
a time in that hut when I was a eating my dinner or my supper,
and I says, ''Here's the boy again, a looking at me whiles I eats
and drinks!" I see you there a many times as plain as ever I see
you on them misty marshes. "Lord strike me dead!" I says each
time — and I goes out in the open air to say it under the open
heavens — "but wot, if I gets liberty and money, I'll make that boy
a gentleman!" And I done it. Why, look at you, dear boy! Look
at these here lodgings of yourn fit for a lord! A lord? Ah! You
shall show money with lords for wagers, and beat 'em!'

In his heat and triumph, and in his knowledge that I had been
jaearly fainting, he did not remark on my reception of all this." It
was the one grain of relief I had.

'Look'ee here!' he went on, taking my watch out of my pocket,
and turning towards him a ring on my finger, while I recoiled
from his touch as if he had been a snake, 'a gold 'un and a beauty:
that's a gentleman's, I hope! A diamond all set round with rubies;
thafs a gentleman's, I hope! Look at your linen; fine and beauti-
ful! Look at your clothes; better ain't to be got! And your books
too,' turning his eyes round the room, 'mounting up, on their
shelves, by hundreds! And you read 'em; don't you? I see you'd

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 311

been a reading of 'em when I come in. Ha, ha, ha! You shall read
'em to me, dear boy! And if they're in foreign languages wot I
don't understand, I shall be just as proud as if I did.'

Again he took both my hands and put them to his lips, while
my blood ran cold within me.

'Don't you mind talking, Pip,' said he, after again drawing his
sleeve over his eyes and forehead, as the click came in his throat
which I well remembered — and he was all the more horrible to me
that he was so much in earnest; 'you can't do better nor keep
quiet, dear boy. You ain't looked slowly forward to this as I
have; you wosn't prepared for this, as I wos. But didn't you never
think it might be me?'

'0 no, no, no,' I returned. 'Never, never!'

'Well, you see it wos me, and single-handed. Never a soul in it
but my own self and Mr. Jaggers.'

'Was there no one else?' I asked.

No,' said he, with a glance of surprise: 'who else should there
be? And, dear boy, how good-looking you have growed! There's
bright eyes somewhere — eh? Isn't there bright eyes somewheres,
wot you love the thoughts on?'

O Estella, Estella!

'They shall be yourn, dear boy, if money can buy 'em. Not that
a gentleman like you, so well set up as you, can't win 'em off of
his own game ; but money shall back you ! I^t me finish wot I was
a telling you, dear boy. From that there hut and that there hiring-
out, I got money left me by my master (which died, and had been
the same as me), and got my liberty and went for myself. In ev-
ery single thing I went for, I went for you. "Lord strike a blight
upon it," I say, wotever it was I went for, "if it ain't for him!" It
all prospered wonderful. As I giv' you to understand just now,
I'm famous for it. It was the money left me, and the gains of the
first few year, wot I sent home to Mr. Jaggers — all for you —
when he first come arter you, agreeable to my letter.'

O, that he had never come! That he had left me at the forge —
far from contented, yet, by comparison, happy!

'And then, dear boy, it was a recompense to me, look'ee here,
to know in secret that I was making a gentleman. The blood

312 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

horses of them colonists might fling up the dust over me as I was
walking; what do I say? I says to myself, ''I'm making a better
gentleman nor ever you^W be!" When one of 'em says to another,
"He was a convict, a few years ago, and is a ignorant common fel-
low now, for all he's lucky," what do I say? I says to myself, "If
I ain't a gentleman, nor yet ain't got no learning, I'm the owner
of such. All on you owns stock and land; which on you owns a
brought-up London gentleman?" This way I kep myself a-going.
And this way I held steady afore my mind that I would for cer-
tain come one day and see my boy, and make myself known to him,
on his own ground.'

He laid his hand on my shoulder. I shuddered at the thought
that for anything I knew, his hand might be stained with blood.

'It warn't easy, Pip, for me to leave them parts, nor yet it warn't
safe. But I held to it, and the harder it was, the stronger I held,
for I was determined, and my mind firm made up. At last I done
it. Dear boy, I done it!'

I tried to collect my thoughts, but I was stunned. Throughout^
I had seemed to myself to attend more to the wind and the rain
than to him; even now, I could not separate his voice from those
voices, though those were loud and his was silent.

'Where will you put me?' he asked, presently. 'I must be put
somewheres, dear boy.'

'To sleep?' said I.

^\es. And to sleep long and sound,' he answered; 'for I've been
sea-tossed and sea-washed, months and months.'

'My friend and companion,' said I, rising from the sofa, 'is ab-
sent; you must have his room.'

'He won't come back to-morrow; will he?'

'No,' said I, answering almost mechanically, in spite of my ut-
most efforts; 'not to-morrow.'

'Because, look'ee here, dear bo;/ he said, dropping his voice,
and laying a long finger on my breast in an impressive manner,
'caution is necessary.'

'How do you mean? Caution?'

'By G—, it's Death!'

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 313

'What's death?'

'I was sent for life. It's death to come back. There's been over-
much coming back of late years, and I should of a certainty be
hanged if took.'

Nothing was needed but this; the wretched man, after loading
me with his wretched gold and silver chain for years, had risked his
life to come to me, and I held it there in my keeping! If I had
loved him instead of abhorring him ; if I had been attracted to him
by the strongest admiration and affection, instead of shrinking
from him with the strongest repugnance; it could have been no
worse. On the contrary, it would have been better, for his preser-
vation would then have naturally and tenderly addressed my heart.

My first care was to close the shutters, so that no light might
be seen from without, and then to close and make fast the doors.
While I did so, he stood at the table drinking rum and eating bis-
cuit; and when I saw him thus engaged, I saw my convict on the
marshes at his meal again. It almost seemed to me as if he must
stoop down presently, to file at his leg.

When I had gone into Herbert's room, and had shut off any
other communication between it and the staircase than through
the room in which our conversation had been held, I asked him if
he would go to bed? He said yes, but asked me for some of my
'gentleman's linen,' to put on in the morning. I brought it out,
and laid it ready for him, and my blood again ran cold when he
again took me by both hands to give me good-night.

I got away from him, without knowing how I did it, and mend-
ed the fire in the room where we had been together, and sat down
by it, afraid to go to bed. For an hour or more, I remained too
stunned to think; and it was not until I began to think, that I be-
gan fully to know how wrecked I was, and how the ship in which
I had sailed had gone to pieces.

Miss Havisham's intentions towards me, all a mere dream;
Estella not designed for me; I only suffered in Satis House as a
convenience, a sting for the greedy relations, a model with a mech-
anical heart to practise on when no other practise was at hand:
those were the first smarts I had. But, sharpest and deepest pain

314 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

of all — it was for the convict, guilty of I knew not what crimes,
and liable to be taken out of those rooms where I sat thinking, and
hanged at the Old Bailey door, that I had deserted Joe.

I would not have gone back to Joe now, I would not have gone
back to Biddy now, for any consideration: simply, I suppose, be-
cause my sense of my own worthless conduct to them was greater
than every consideration. No wisdom on earth could have given
me the comfort that I should have derived from their simplicity
and fidelity; but I could never, never, never, undo what I had
done.

In every rage of wind and rush of rain, I heard pursuers. Twice,
I could have sworn there was a knocking and whispering at the
outer door. With these fears upon me, I began either to imagine
or recall that I had had mysterious warnings of this man's ap-
proach. That, for weeks gone by, I had passed faces in the streets
which I had thought like his. That, these likenesses had grown
more numerous, as he, coming over the sea, had drawn nearer.
That, his wicked spirit had somehow sent these messengers to mine,
and that now on this stormy night he was as good as his word, and
with me.

Crowding up with these reflections came the reflection that I
had seen him with my childish eyes to be a desperately violent
man; that I had heard that other convict reiterate that he had
tried to murder him; that I had seen him down in the ditch, tear-
ing and fighting like a wild beast. Out of such remembrances I
brought into the light of the fire, a half-formed terror that it might
not be safe to be shut up there with him in the dead of the wild
solitary night. This dilated until it filled the room, and impelled
me to take a candle and go in and look at my dreadful burden.

He had rolled a handkerchief round his head, and his face was
set and lowering in his sleep. But he was asleep, and quietly too,
though he had a pistol lying on the pillow. Assured of this, I soft-
ly removed the key to the outside of his door, and turned it on him
before I again sat down by the fire. Gradually I slipped from the
chair and lay on the floor. When I awoke without having parted in
my sleep with the perception of my wretchedness, the clocks of
the Eastward churches were striking five, the candles were wasted

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 315

out, the fire was dead, and the wind and rain intensified the thick
black darkness.

THIS IS THE END OF THE SECOND STAGE OF PIP S
EXPECTATIONS.

CHAPTER XL

It was fortunate for me that I had to take precautions to insure
(so far as I could) the safety of my dreaded visitor; for, this
thought pressing on me when I awoke, held other thoughts in a
confused concourse at a distance.

The impossibility of keeping him concealed in the chambers was
self-evident. It could not be done, and the attempt to do it would
inevitably engender suspicion. True, I had no Avenger in my ser-
vice now, but I was looked after by an inflammatory old female,
assisted by an animated rag-bag whom she called her niece; and
to keep a room secret from them would be to invite curiosity and
exaggeration. They both had weak eyes, which I had long attri-
buted to their chronically looking in at keyholes, and they were
always at hand when not wanted ; indeed that was their only reli-
able quality besides larceny. Not to get up a mystery with these
people, I resolved to announce in the morning that my uncle had
unexpectedly come from the country.

This course I decided on while I was yet groping about in the
darkness for the means of getting a light. Not stumbling on the
means after all, I was fain to go out to the adjacent Lodge and get
the watchman there to come with his lantern. Now in groping my
way down the black staircase I fell over something, and that some-
thing was a man crouching in a corner.

As the man made no answer when I asked him what he did there,
but eluded my touch in silence, I ran to the Lodge and urged the
watchman to come quickly: telling him of the incident on the way
back. The wind being as fierce as ever, we did not care to endan-
ger the light in the lantern by rekindling the extingui-shed lamps

316 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

on the staircase, but we examined the staircase from the bottom to
the top and found no one there. It then occurred to me as possible
that the man might have sHpped into my rooms; so, lighting my
candle at the watchman's, and leaving him standing at the door,
I examined them carefully, including the room in which my dread-
ed guest lay asleep. All was quiet, and assuredly no other man was
in those chambers.

It troubled me that there should have been a lurker on the stairs,
on that night of all nights in the year, and I asked the watchman,
on the chance of eliciting some hopeful explanation as I handed
him a dram at the door, whether he had admitted at his gate any
gentleman who had perceptibly been dining out? Yes, he said;
at different times of the night, three. One lived in Fountain Court,
and the other two lived in the Lane, and he had seen them all go
home. Again, the only other man who dwelt in the house of which
my chambers formed a part, had been in the coutntry for some
weeks; and he certainly had not returned in the night, because
we had seen his door with his seal on it as we came upstairs.

'The night being so bad, sir,' said the watchman, as he gave me
back my glass, 'uncommon few have come in at my gate. Besides
them three gentlemen that I have named, I don't call to mind an-
other since about eleven o'clock, when a stranger asked for you.*

'My uncle,' I muttered. 'Yes.'

'You saw him, sir?'

'Yes. Oh yes.'

'Likewise the person with him?'

'Person with him!' I repeated.

'I judged the person to be with him/ returned the watchman.
'The person stopped, when he stopped to make inquiry of me, and
the person took this way v/hen he took this way.'

'What sort of person?'

The watchman had not particularly noticed; he should say a
working person; to the best of his belief, he had a dust-coloured
kind of clothes on, under a dark coat. The watchnian made more
light of the matter than I did, and naturally; not having any rea-
son for attaching weight to it.

WTien I had got rid of him, which I thought it well to do with-

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 317

out prolonging explanations, my mind was much troubled by these
two circumstances taken together. Whereas they were easy of in-
nocent solution apart — as, for instance, some diner-out or diner-
at-home, who had not gone near this watchman's gate, might have
strayed to my staircase and dropped asleep there — and my name-
less visitor might have brought some one with him to show him
the way — still, joined, they had an ugly look to one as prone to
distrust and fear as the changes of a few hours had made me.

I lighted my fire, which burnt with a raw pale flare at that time
of the morning, and fell into a doze before it. I seemed to have
been dozing a whole night when the clocks struck six. As there was
full an hour and a half between me and daylight, I dozed again;
now, waking up uneasily, with prolix conversations about nothing,
in my ears; now, making thunder of the wind in the chimney; at
length, falling off into a profound sleep from which the daylight
woke me with a start.

All this time I had never been able to consider my own situa-
tion, nor could I do so yet. I had not the power to attend to it. I
was greatly dejected and distressed, but in an incoherent wholesale
sort of way. As to forming any plan for the future, I could as
soon have formed an elephant. When I opened the shutters and
looked out at the wet wild morning, all of a leaden hue; when I
walked from room to room; when I sat down again shivering, be-
fore the fire, waiting for my laundress to appear; I thought how
miserable I was, but hardly knew why, or how long I had been so,
or on what day of the week I made the reflection, or even who I
was that made it.

At last the old woman and the niece came in — the latter with a
head not easily distinguishable from her dusty broom — and testi-
fied surprise at sig'it of me and the fire. To whom I imparted how
my uncle bad come in the night and was then asleep, and how the
breakfast preparations were to be modified accordingly. Then, I
washed and dressed while they knocked the furniture about and
made a dust; and so, in a sort of dream or sleep-waking, I found
myself sitting by the fire again, waiting for — Him — to come to
breakfast.

By and by, his door opened and he came out. I could not bring

318 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

myself to bear the sight of him, and I thought he had a worse look
by daylight.

^I do not even know,' said I, speaking low as he took his seat at
the table, 'by what name to call you. I have given out that you
are my uncle.'

'That's it, dear boy! Call me uncle.'

'You assumed some name, I suppose, on board ship?'

'Yes, dear boy. I took the name of Provis.'

'Do you mean to keep that name?'

'Why, yes, dear boy, it's as good as another — unless you'd like
another.'

'What is your real name?' I asked him in a whisper.

'Magwitch,' he answered in the same tone; 'chrisen'd Abel.'

What were you brought up to be?'

'A warmint, dear boy.'

He answered quite seriously, and used the word as if it denoted
some profession.

'When you came into the Temple last night ' said I, paus-
ing to wonder whether that could really have been last night,
which seemed so long ago.

'Yes, dear boy?'

'When you came in at the gate and asked the watchman the way
here, had you any one with you?'

With me? No, dear boy.'

'But there was some one there?'

'I didn't take particular notice,' he said, dubiously, 'not know-
ing the ways of the place. But I think there was a person, too,
come in alonger me.'

'Are you known in London?'

T hope not!' said he, giving his neck a jerk with his forefinger
that made me turn hot and sick.

'Were you known in London, once?'

'Not over and above, dear boy. I was in the provinces mostly.'

'Were you — tried — in London?'

'Which time?' said he, with a sharp look.

'The last time.'

t

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 319

He nodded. 'First knowed Mr. Jaggers that way. Jaggers was
for me.'

It was on my lips to ask him what he was tried for, but he took
up a knife, gave it a flourish, and with the words, 'And what I done
is worked out and paid for!' fell to at his breakfast.

He ate in a ravenous way that was very disagreeable, and all his
actions were uncouth, noisy, and greedy. Some of his teeth had
failed him since I saw him eat on the marshes, and as he turned
his food in his mouth, and turned his head sideways to bring his
strongest fangs to bear upon it, he looked terribly like a hungry old
dog.

If I had begun with any appetite, he would have taken it away,
and I should have sat much as I did — repelled from him by an
insurmountable aversion, and gloomily looking at the cloth.

'I'm a heavy grubber, dear boy,' he said, as a polite kind of
apology when he had made an end of his meal, 'but I always was.
If it had been in my constitution to be a lighter grubber, I might
ha' got into lighter trouble. Similarly I must have my smoke.
When I was first hired out as shepherd t' other side the world, it's
my belief I should ha' turned into a molloncolly-mad sheep myself,
if I hadn't a had my smoke.'

As he said so he got up from table, and putting his hand into the
breast of the pea-coat he wore, brought out a short black pipe, and
a handful of loose tobacco of the kind that is called negro-head.
Having filled his pipe, he put the surplus tobacco back again, as if
his pocket were a drawer. Then, he took a live coal from the fire
with the tongs, and lighted his pipe at it, and then turned round on
the hearth-rug with his back to the fire, and went through his fav-
ourite action of holding out both his hands for mine.

'And this,' said he, dandling my hands up and down in his, as he
puffed at his pipe; 'and this is the gentleman what I made! The
real genuine One! It does me good fur to look at you, Pip. All I
stip'late, is, to stand by and look at you, dear boy ! '

I released my hands as soon as I could, and found that I was
beginning slowly to settle down to the contemplation of my con-
dition. What I was chained to, and how heavily, became intelligi-

320 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

ble to me, as I heard his hoarse voice, and sat looking up at his
furrowed bald head with its iron-grey hair at the sides.

*I mustn't see my gentleman a footing it in the mire of the
streets; there mustn't be no mud on his boots. My gentleman must
have horses, Pip! Horses to ride, and horses to drive, and horses
for his servant to ride and drive as well. Shall colonists have their
horses (and blood-'uns, if you please, good Lord!) and not my
London gentleman? No, no. We'll show 'em another pair of shoes
than that, Pip; won't us?'

He took out of his pocket a great thick pocketbook, bursting
with papers, and tossed it on the table.

'There's something worth spending in that there book, dear boy.
It's yourn. All I've got ain't mine; it's yourn. Don't you be
afeerd on it. There's more where that come from. I've come to
the old country fur to see my gentleman spend his money like a
gentleman. That'll by my pleasure. My pleasure 'ull be fur to see
him do it. And blast you all!' he wound up, looking round the
room and snapping his fingers once with a loud snap, 'blast you
every one, from the judge in his wig, to the colonist a stirring up
the dust, ril show a better gentleman than the whole kit on you
put together ! '

'Stop!' said J, almost in a frenzy of fear and dislike, 'I want to
fpeak to you. I want to know what is to be done. I want to know
how you are to be kept out of danger, how long you are going to
stay, what projects you have.'

'Look'ee here, Pip,' said he, laying his hand on my arm in a
suddenly altered and subdued manner; 'first of all, look'ee here.
I forgot myself half a minute ago. What I said was low; that's
what it was; low. Look'ee here, Pip. Look over it. I ain't a-going
to be low.'

'First,' I resumed, half-groaning, 'what precautions can be taken
against your being recognised and seized?'

'No, dear boy,' he said, in the same tone as before, 'that don't
go first. Lowness goes first. I ain't took so many year to make a
gentleman, not without knowing what's due to him. Look'ee here,
Pip. I was low; that's what I was; low. Look over it, dear boy.'

Some sense of the grimly-ludicrous moved me to a fretful laugh.

\

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 321

as I replied, 'I have looked over it. In Heaven's name, don't harp
upon it!'

'Yes, but look'ee here,' he persisted. 'Dear boy, I ain't come so
fur, not fur to be low. Now, go on, dear boy. You was a
saying '

'How are you to be guarded from the danger you have in-
curred?'

'Well, dear boy, the danger ain't so great. Without I was in-
formed agen, the danger ain't so much to signify. There's Jag-
gers, and there's Wemmick, and there's you. Who else is there to
inform?'

'Is there no chance person who might identify you in the street?'
said I.

'Well,' he returned, 'there ain't many. Nor yet I don't intend to
advertise myself in the newspapers by the name of A. M. come
back from Botany Bay; and years have rolled away, and who's to
gain by it? Still, look'ee here, Pip. If the danger had been fifty
times as great, I should ha' come to see you, mind you, just the
same.'

'And how long do you remain?'

'How long?' said he, taking his black pipe from his mouth, and
dropping his jaw as he stared at me. 'I'm not a-going back. I've
come for good.'

'Where are you to live?' said I. 'What is to be done with you?
Where will you be safe?'

'Dear boy,' he returned, 'there's disguising wigs can be bought
for money, and there's hair powder, and spectacles, and black
clothes — shorts and what not. Others has done it safe afore, and
what others has done afore, others can do agen. As to the where
and how of living, dear boy, give me your own opinions on it.'

'You take it smoothly now,' said I, 'but you were very serious
last night, when you swore it was Death.'

'And so I swear it is Death,' said he, putting his pipe back in
his mouth, 'and Death by the rope, in the open street not fur from
this, and it's serious that you should fully understand it to be so.
What then, when that's once done? Here I am. To go back now.
'ud be as bad as to stand ground — worse. Besides, Pip, I'm here,

322 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

because I've meant it by you, years and years. As to what I dare,
I'm a old bird now, as has dared all manner of traps since first he
was fledged, and I'm not afeerd to perch upon a scarecrow. If
there's Death hid inside of it, there is, and let him come out, and
I'll face him, and then I'll believe in him and not afore. And now
let me have a look at my gentleman agen.'

Once more he took me by both hands and surveyed me with an
air of admiring proprietorship, smoking with great complacency
all the while.

It appeared to me that I could do no better than secure him
some quiet lodging hard by, of which he might take possession
when Herbert returned: whom I expected in two or three days.
That the secret must be confided to Herbert as a matter of un-
avoidable necessity, even if I could have put the immense relief I
should derive from sharing it with him out of the question, was
plain to me. But it was by no means so plain to Mr. Provis (I re-
solved to call him by that name), who reserved his consent to
Herbert's participation until he should have seen him and formed
a favourable judgment of his physiognomy. And even then, dear
boy,' said he, pulling a greasy little clasped black Testament out
of his pocket, 'we'll have him on his oath.'

To state that my terrible patron carried this little black book
about the world solely to swear people on in cases of emergency,
would be to state what I never quite established — but this I can
say, that I never knew him put it to any other use. The book
itself had the appearance of having been stolen from some court
of justice, and perhaps his knowledge of its antecedents, combined
with his own experience in that wise, gave him a reliance on its
powers as a sort of legal spell or charm. On this first occasion of
his producing it, I recalled how he had made me swear fidelity in
the churchyard long ago, and how he had described himself last
night as always swearing to his resolutions in his solitude.

As he was at present dressed in a seafaring slop suit, in which
he looked as if he had some parrots and cigars to dispose of, I
next discussed with him what dress he should wear. He cherished
an extraordinary belief in the virtues of 'shorts' as a disguise, and
had in his own mind sketched a dress for himself that would have

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 323

made him something between a dean and a dentist. It was with
considerable difficulty that I won him over to the assumption of a
dress more like a prosperous farmer's; and we arranged that he
should cut his hair close, and wear a little powder. Lastly as he
had not yet been seen by the laundress or her niece, he was to keep
himself out of their view until his change of dress was made.

It would seem a simple matter to decide on these precautions;
but in my dazed, not to say distracted, state, it took so long, that I
did not get out to further them until two or three in the afternoon.
He was to remain shut up in the chambers while I was gone, and
was on no account to open the door.

There being to my knowledge a respectable lodging-house in
Essex Street, the back of which looked into the Temple, and was
almost within hail of my windows, I first of all repaired to that
house, and was so fortunate as to secure the second floor for my
uncle, Mr. Provis. I then went from shop to shop, making such
purchases as were necessary to the change in his appearance. This
business transacted, I turned my face, on my own account, to Little
Britain. Mr. Jaggers was at his desk, but, seeing me enter, got up
immediately and stood before his fire.

'Now, Pip,' said he, 'be careful.'

*I will, sir,' I returned. For coming along I had thought well of
what I was going to say.

'Don't commit yourself,' said Mr. Jaggers, 'and don't commit
any one. You understand — any one. Don't tell me anything: I
don't want to know anything: I am not curious.'

Of course I saw that he knew the man was come.

'I merely want, Mr. Jaggers,' said I, 'to assure myself what I
have been told, is true. I have no hope of its being untrue, but at
least I may verify it.'

Mr. Jaggers nodded. 'But did you say "told" or "informed"?'
he asked me, with his head on one side, and not looking at me, but
looking in a listening way at the floor. 'Told would seem to imply
verbal communication. You can't have verbal communication with
a man in New South Wales, you know.'

'I wfll say, informed, Mr. Jaggers.'

'Good.'

324 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

'I have been informed by a person named Abel Magwitch, that
he is the benefactor so long unknown to me.'

'That is the man,' said Mr. Jaggers, ' — in New South Wales.'

'And only he?' said I.

And only he,' said Mr. Jaggers.

'I am not so unreasonable, sir, as to think you at all responsi-
ble for my mistakes and wrong conclusions; but I always sup-
posed it was Miss Havisham.'

As you say, Pip,' returned Mr. Jaggers, turning his eyes upon
me coolly, and taking a bite at his forefinger, 'I am not at all re-
sponsible for that.'

And yet it looked so like it, sir,' I pleaded with a downcast
heart.

'Not a particle of evidence, Pip,' said Mr. Jaggers, shaking his
head and gathering up his skirts. 'Take nothing on its looks; take
everything on evidence. There's no better rule.'

'I have no more to say,' said I, with a sigh, after standing silent
for a little while. 'I have verified my information, and there's an
end.'

'And Magwitch — in New South Wales — having at last disclosed
himself,' said Mr. Jaggers, 'you will comprehend, Pip, how rigidly
throughout my communication with you, I have always adhered to
the strict line of fact. There has never been the least departure
from the stict line of fact. You are quite aware of that?'

'Quite, sir.'

'I communicated to Magwitch — in New South Wales — when he
first wrote to me — from New South Wales — the caution that he
must not expect me ever to deviate from the strict line of fact. I
also communicated to him another caution. He appeared to me to
have obscurely hinted in his letter at some distant idea of seeing
you in England here. I cautioned him that I must hear no more of
that; that he was not at all likely to obtain a pardon; that he was
expatriated for the term of his natural life; and that his presenting
himself in this country would be an act of felon}^ rendering him
liable to the extreme penalty of the law. I gave Magwitch that
caution,' said Mr. Jaggers, looking hard at me; 'I wrote it to New
South Wales. He guided himself by it, no doubt,'

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 325

'No doubt,' said I.

'I have been informed by Wemmick,' pursued Mr. Jaggers, still
looking hard at me, 'that he has received a letter, under date
Portsmouth, from a colonist of the name of Purvis, or '

'Or Provis,' I suggested.

'Or Provis — thank you, Pip. Perhaps it is Provis? Perhaps you
know it's Provis?'

'Yes,' said I.

'You know it's Provis. A letter, under date Portsmouth, from a
colonist of the name of Provis, asking for the particulars of your
address, on behalf of Magwitch. Wemmick sent him the particu-
lars, I understand, by return of post. Porbably it is through Pro-
vis that you have received the explanation of Magwitch — in New
South Wales?'

'It came through Provis,' I replied.

'Good-day, Pip,' said Mr. Jaggers, offering his hand; 'glad to
have seen you. In writing by post to Magwitch — in New South
Wales — or in communicating with him through Provis, have the
goodness to mention that the particulars and vouchers of our long
account shall be sent to you, together with the balance; for there
is still a balance remaining. Good-day, Pip!'

We shook hands, and he looked hard at me as long as he could
see me. I turned at the door, and he was still looking hard at me,
while the two vile casts on the shelf seemed to be trying to get their
eyelids open, and to force out of their swollen throats, 'O, what a
man he is I '

Wemmick was out, and though he had been at his desk he could
have done nothing for me. I went straight back to the Temple,
where I found the terrible Provis drinking rum-and-water, and
smoking negro-head, in safety.

Next day the clothes I had ordered all came home, and he put
them on. Whatever he put on, became him less (it dismally
seemed to me) than what he had worn before. To my thinking
there was something in him that made it hopeless to attempt to
disguise him. The more I dressed him, and the better I dressed
him, the more he looked like the slouching fugitive on the marshes.
This effect on my anxious fancy was partly referable, no doubt, to

326 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

his old face and manner growing more familiar to me: but I be-
lieved too that he dragged one of his legs as if there were still a
weight of iron on it, and that from head to foot there was Convict
in the very grain of the man.

The influences of his solitary hut-life were upon him besides,
and gave him a savage air that no dress could tame; added to
these were the influences of his subsequent branded life among
men, and, crowning all, his consciousness that he was dodging and
hiding now. In all his ways of sitting and standing, and eating
and drinking — of brooding about, in a high-shouldered reluctant
style — of taking out his great horn-handled jack-knife and wiping
it on his legs and cutting his food — of lifting light glasses and
cups to his lips, as if they were clumsy pannikins — of chopping a
wedge off his bread, and soaking up with it the last fragments of
gravy round and round his plate, as if to make the most of an al-
lowance, and then drying his fingers on it, and then swallowing it
— in these ways and a thousand other small nameless instances
arising every minute in the day, there was Prisoner, Felon, Bonds-
man, plain as plain could be.

It had been his own idea to wear that touch of powder, and I
conceded the powder after overcoming the shorts. But I can com-
pare the effect of it, when on, to nothing but the probable effect of
rouge upon the dead; so awful was the manner in which every-
thing in him that it was most desirable to repress, started through
that thin layer of pretence, and seemed to come blazing out at the
crown of his head. It was abandoned as soon as tried, and he wore
his grizzled hair cut short.

Words cannot tell what a sense I had, at the same time, of the
dreadful mystery that he was to me. When he fell asleep of an
evening, with his knotted hands clenching the sides of the easy-
chair, and his bald head tattooed with deep wrinkles falling for-
ward on his breast, I would sit and look at him, wondering what
he had done, and loading him with all the crimes in the Calendar,
until the impulse was powerful on me to start up and fly from him.
Every hour so increased by abhorrence of him, that I even think I
might have yielded to this impulse in the first agonies of being so
haunted, notwithstanding all he had done for me and the risk he

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 327

ran, but for the knowledge that Herbert must soon come back.
Once, I actually did start out of bed in the night, and begin to
dress myself in my worst clothes, hurriedly intending to leave him
there with everything else I possessed, and enlist for India, as a
private soldier.

I doubt if a ghost could have been more terrible to me, up in
those lonely rooms in the long evenings and long nights, with the
wind and the rain always rushing by. A ghost could not have been
taken and hanged on my account, and the cosideration that he
could be, and the dread that he would be, were no small addition to
my horrors. When he was not asleep, or playing a complicated
kind of Patience with a ragged pack of cards of his own — a game
that I never saw before or since, and in which he recorded his win-
nings by sticking his jack-knife into the table — when he was not
engaged in either of these pursuits, he would ask me to read to
him — 'Foreign language, dear boy!' While I complied, he, not
comprehending a single word, would stand before the fire survey-
ing me with the air of an Exhibitor, and I would see him, between
the fingers of the hand with which I shaded my face, appealing in
dumb show to the furniture to take notice of my proficiency. The
imaginary student pursued by the misshapen creature he had im-
piously made, was not more wretched than I, pursued by the
creature who had made me, and recoiling from him with a stronger
repulsion, the more he admired me and the fonder he was of me.

This is written of, I am sensible, as if it had lasted a year. It
lasted about five days. Expecting Herbert all the time, I dared not
go out, except when I took Provis for an airing after dark. At
length, one evening when dinner was over and I had dropped into
a slumber quite worn out — for my nights had been agitated and
my rest broken by fearful dreams — I was roused by the welcome
footstep on the staircase. Provis, who had been asleep too, stag-
gered up at the noise I made, and in an instant I saw his jack-
knife shining in his hand.

'Quiet! It's Herbert!' I said; and Herbert came bursting in,
with the airy freshness of six hundred miles of France upon him.

'Handel, my dear fellow, how are you, and again how are you,
and agam how are you? I seem to have been gone a twelvemonth!

328 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

Why, so I must have been, for you have grown quite thin and
pale!' Handel, my Halloa! I beg your pardon.'

He was stopped in his running on and in his shaking hands with
me, by seeing Provis. Provis, regarding him with a fixed attention,
was slowly putting up his jack-knife, and groping in another
pocket for something else.

'Herbert, my dear friend,' said I, shutting the double doors,
while Herbert stood staring and wondering, 'something very
strange has happened. This is — a visitor of mine.'

'It's all right, dear boy!' said Provis, coming forward with his
little clasped black book, and then addressing himself to Herbert.
'Take it in your right hand. Lord strike you dead on the spot, if
ever you split in any way sumever. Kiss it! '

'Do so, as he wishes it,' I said to Herbert. So Herbert, looking
at me with a friendly uneasiness and amazement, complied, and
Provis immediately shaking hands with him, said, 'Now, you're on
your oath, you know. And never believe me on mine, if Pip shan't
make a gentleman on you!'

CHAPTER XLI

In vain should I attempt to describe the astonishment and dis-
quiet of Herbert, when he and I and Provis sat down before the
fire, and I recounted the whole of the secret. Enough that I saw
my own feelings reflected in Herbert's face, and, not least among
them, my repugnance towards the man who had done so much
for me.

What would alone have set a division between that man and us,
if there had been no other dividing circumstance, was his triumph
in my story. Saving his troublesome sense of having been 'low' on
one occasion since his return — on which point he began to hold
forth to Herbert, the moment my revelation was finished — he had
no perception of the possibility of my finding any fault with my
good fortune. His boast that he had made me a gentleman, and
that he had come to see me support the character on his ample re-

GREAT P:XPECTATI0NS 329

I

Isources, was made for me quite as much as for himself. And that
it was a highly agreeable boast to both of us, and that we must
both be very proud of it, was a conclusion quite established in his
own mind.

'Though, look'ee here, Pip's comrade,' he said to Herbert, after

aving discoursed for some time, 'I know very well that once since
I come back — for half a minute — I've been low. I said to Pip, I

nowed as I had been low. But don't you fret yourself on that
score. I ain't made Pip a gentleman, and Pip ain't a-goin' to make
you a gentleman, not fur me not to know what's due to ye both.
Dear boy, and Pip's comrade, you two may count upon me al-
ways having a genteel muzzle on. Muzzled I have been since that
half a minute when I was betrayed into lowness, muzzled I am at
the present time, muzzled I ever will be.'

Herbert said, 'Certainly,' but looked as if there were no specific
4:onsolation in this, and remained perplexed and dismayed. We
were anxious for the time when he would go to his lodgings, and
leave us together, but he was evidently jealous of leaving us to-
gether, and sat late. It was midnight before I took him round to
Essex Street, and saw him safely in at his own dark door. When it
dosed upon him, I experienced the first moment of relief I had
known since the night of his arrival.

Never quite free from an uneasy remembrance of the man on
the stairs, I had always looked about me in taking my guest out
after dark, and in bringing him back; and I looked about me now.
Difficult as it is in a large city to avoid the suspicion of being
watched when the mind is conscious of danger in that regard, I
could not persuade myself that any of the people within sight cared
about my movements. The few who were passing, passed on their
several ways, and the street was empty when I turned back into
the Temple. Nobody had come out at the gate with us, nobody
went in at the gate with me. As I crossed by the fountain, I saw
his lighted back windows looking bright and quiet, and, when I
stood for a few moments in the doorway of the building where I
lived, before going up the stairs. Garden Court was as still and
Kfeless as the staircase was when I ascended it.

Herbert received me with open arms, and I had never felt be-

330 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

fore so blessedly, what it is to have a friend. When he had spoken
some sound words of sympathy and encouragement, we sat down
to consider the question. What was to be done?

The chair that Provis had occupied still remaining where it had
stood — for he had a barrack way with him of hanging about one
spot, in one unsettled manner, and going through one round of
observances with his pipe and his negro-head and his jack-knife
and his pack of cards, and what not, as if it were all put down for
him on a slate — I say, his chair remaining where it had stood, Her-
bert unconsciously took it, but next moment started out of it,
pushed it away, and took another. He had no occasion to say, after
that, that he had conceived an aversion for my patron, neither had
I occasion to confess my own. We interchanged that confidence
without shaping a syllable.

'What,' said I to Herbert, when he was safe in another chair,
'What is to be done?'

'My poor dear Handel,' he replied, holding his head, 'I am too
stunned to think.'

'So was I, Herbert, when the blow first fell. Still, something
must be done. He is intent upon various new expenses — horses,
and carriages, and lavish appearances of all kinds. He must be
stopped somehow.'

'You mean that you can't accept '

'How can I?' I interposed, as Herbert paused. 'Think of him!
Look at him ! '

An involuntary shudder passed over both of us.

'Yet I am afraid the dreadful truth is, Herbert, that he is at-
tached to me, strongly attached to me. Was there ever such a
fate!'

'My poor dear Handel!' Herbert repeated.

'Then,' said I, 'after all, stopping short here, never taking an-
other penny from him, think what I owe him already! Then
again: I am heavily in debt — very heavily for me, who have now
no expectations — and I have been bred to no calling, and I am fit
for nothing.'

'Well, well, well!' Herbert remonstrated. 'Don't say fit for
nothing.'

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 331

'What am I fit for? I know only one thing that I am fit for, and
that is, to go for a soldier. And I might have gone, dear Herbert,
but for the prospect of taking counsel with your friendship and
affection.'

Of course I broke down there; and of course Herbert, beyond
seizing a warm grip of my hand, pretended not to know it.

'Anyhow, my dear Handel,' said he presently, 'soldiering won't
do. If you were to renounce this patronage and these favours, I
suppose you would do so with some faint hope of one day repay-
ing what you have already had. Not very strong, that hope, if you
went soldiering. Besides, it's absurd. You would be infinitely bet-
ter in Clarriker's house, small as it is. I am working up towards a
Ipartnership, you know.'

1 Poor fellow! He little suspected with whose money.
j 'But there is another question,' said Herbert. 'This is an ignor-
jant determined man, who has long had one fixed idea. More than
I that, he seems to me (I may misjudge him) to be a man of a des-
jperate and fierce character.'

'I know he is,' I returned. 'Let me tell you what evidence I have
seen of it.' And I told him what I had not mentioned in my nar-
rative; of that encounter with the other convict.

'See, then,' said Herbert; 'think of this! He comes here at the
peril of his life, for the realisation of his fixed idea. In the moment
of realisation, after all his toil and waiting, you cut the ground
from under his feet, destroy his idea, and make his gains worthless
to him. Do you see nothing that he might do under the dis-
appointment?'

'I have seen it, Herbert, and dreamed of it ever since the fatal
night of his arrival. Nothing has been in my thoughts so distinctly
as his putting himself in the way of being taken.'

'Then you may rely upon it,' said Herbert, 'that there would be
great danger of his doing it. That is his power over you as long as
he remains in England, and that would be his reckless course if
you forsook him.'

I was so struck by the horror of this idea, which had weighed
upon me from the first, and the working out of which would make
me regard myself, in some sort, as his murderer, that I could not

332 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

rest in my chair, but began pacing to and fro. I said to Herbert,
meanwhile, that even if Provis were recognised and taken, in spite
of himself, I should be wretched as the cause, however innocent]}-.
Yes; even though I was so wretched in having him at large and
near me, and even though I would far rather have worked at the
forge all the days of my life than I would ever have come to this!

But there was no staving off the question, What was to be done?

'The first and the main thing to be done,' said Herbert, 'is to
get him out of England. You will have to go with him, and then
he may be induced to go.'

'But get him where I will, could I prevent his coming back?'

'My good Handel, is it not obvious that with Newgate in the
next street, there must be far greater hazard in your breaking your
mind to him and making him reckless, here, than elsewhere. If a
pretext to get him away could be made out of that other convict,
or out of anything else in his life, now.'

'There again!' said I, stopping before Herbert, with my open
hands held out, as if they contained the desperation of the case.
T know nothing of his life. It has almost made me mad to sit here
of a night and see him before me, so bound up with my fortunes
and misfortunes, and yet so unknown to me, except as the miser-
able wretch who terrified me two days in my childhood!'

Herbert got up, and linked his arm in mine, and we slowly
walked to and fro together, studying the carpet.

'Handel,' said Herbert, stopping, 'you feel convinced that you
can take no further benefits from him; do you?'

'Fully. Surely you would, too, if you were in my place?'

'And you feel convinced that you must break with him?'

'Herbert, can you ask me?'

'And you have, and are bound to have, that tenderness for the
life he has risked on your account, that you must save him, if pos-
sible, from throwing it away. Then you must get him out of Eng-
land before you stir a finger to extricate yourself. That done,
extricate yourself, in Heaven's name, and we'll '^ee it out together,
dear old boy.'

It was a comfort to shake hands upon it, and walk up and down
again with only that done.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 333

'Now, Herbert,' said I, 'with reference to gaining some knowl-
edge of his history. There is but one way that I know of. I must
ask him point-blank.'

'Yes. Ask him,' said Herbert, 'when we sit at breakfast in the
morning.' For, he had said, on taking leave of Herbert, that he
would come to breakfast with us.

With this project formed, we went to bed. I had the wildest
dreams concerning him, and woke unrefreshed; I woke, too, to
recover the fear which I had lost in the night, of his being found
out as a returned transport. Waking, I never lost that fear.

He came round at the appointed time, took out his jack-knife,
and sat down to his meal. He was full of plans 'for his gentle-
man's coming out strong, and like a gentleman,' and urged me to
begin speedily upon the pocket-book, which he had left in my pos-
session. He considered the chambers and his own lodging as tem-
porary residences, and advised me to look out at once for a 'fash-
ionable crib' near Hyde Park, in which he could have 'a shake-
down.' When he had made an end of his breakfast, and was
wiping his knife on his leg, I said to him, without a word of
preface :

'After you were gone last night, I told my friend of the struggle
that the soldiers found you engaged in on the marshes, when we
came up. You remember?'

'Remember!' said he. 'I think so!'

'We want to know something about that man — and about you.
It is strange to know no more about either, and particularly you,
than I was able to tell last night. Is not this as good a time as
another for our knowing more?'

'Well!' he said, after consideration. 'You're on your oath, you
know, Pip's comrade?'

'Assuredly,' replied Herbert.

'As to anything I say, you know,' he insisted. 'The oath applies
to all.'

'I understand it to do so.'

'And look'ee here! Wotever I done, is worked out and paid for/
he insisted again.

'So be it.'

334j great expectations

He took out his black pipe and was going to fill it with negro-
head, when, looking at the tangle of tobacco in his hand, he seemed
to think it might perplex the thread of his narrative. He put it
back again, stuck his pipe in a button-hole of his coat, spread a
hand on each knee, and, after turning an angry eye on the fire for
a few silent moments, looked around at us and said what follows.

CHAPTER XLH

'Dear boy and Pip's comrade. I am not a-going fur to tell you my
life, like a song or a story-book. But to give it you short and
handy, I'll put it at once into a mouthful of English. In jail and
out of jail, in jail and out of jail, in jail and out of jail. There,
you've got it. That's my life pretty much, down to such times as I
got shipped off, arter Pip stood my friend.

. 'I've been done everything to, pretty well — except hanged. I've
been locked up, as much as a silver teakittle. I've been carted here
and carted there, and put out of this town and put out of that
town, and stuck in the stocks, and whipped and worried and drove.
I've no more notion where I was born, than you have — if so much.
I first become aware of myself, down in Essex, a thieving turnips
for my living. Summun had run away from me — a man — a tinker
— and he'd took the fire with him, and left me wery cold.

'I know'd my name to be Magwitch, chrisen'd Abel. How did I
know it? Much as I know'd the birds' names in the hedges to be
chaffinch, sparrer, thrush. I might have thought it was all lies to-
gether, only as the birds' names come out true, I supposed mine
did.

'So fur as I could find, there warn't a soul that see young Abel
Magwitch, with as little on him as in him, but wot caught fright at
him, and either drove him off or took him up. I was took up, took
up, took up, to that extent that I reg'larly grow'd up took up.

'This is the way it was, that when I was a ragged little creetur
as much to be pitied as ever I see (not that I looked in the glass,
for there warn't many insides of furnished houses known to me),

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 335

I got the name of being hardened. "This is a terrible hardened
one," they says to prison wisitors, picking out me. "May be said
to live in jails, this boy." Then they looked at me, and I looked at
them, and they measured my head, some on 'em — they had better
a measured my stomach — and others on 'em giv me tracts what I
couldn't read, and made me speeches what I couldn't understand.
They always went on agen me about the Devil. But what the
devil was I to do? I must put something into my stomach, mustn't
I? — Howsomever, I'm a getting low, and I know what's due. Dear
boy and Pip's comrade, don't you be afeerd of me being low.

^Tramping, begging, thieving, working sometimes when I could
— though that warn't as often as you may think, till you put the
question whether you would ha' been over-ready to give me work
yourselves — a bit of a poacher, a bit of a labourer, a bit of a wag-
goner, a bit of a haymaker, a bit of a hawker, a bit of most things
that don't pay and lead to trouble, I got to be a man. A deserting
soldier in a Traveller's Rest, what lay hid up to the chin under a
lot of taturs, learnt me to read ; and a travelling Giant what signed
his name at a penny a time learnt me to write. I warn't locked up
as often now as formerly, but I wore out my good share of key-
metal still.

*At Epson races, a matter of over twenty year ago, I got ac-
quainted wi' a man whose skull Fd crack wi' this poker, like the
claw of a lobster, if I'd got it on this hob. His right name was
Compeyson; and that's the man, dear boy, what you see me pound-
ing in the ditch, according to what you truly told your comrade
arter I was gone last night.

'He set up fur a gentleman, this Compeyson, and he'd been to a
public boarding-school and had learning. He was a smooth one to
talk, and was a dab at the ways of gentlefolks. He was good-
looking too. It was the night afore the great race, when I found
him on the heath, in a booth that I know'd on. Him and some
more was a sitting among the tables when I went in, and the land-
lord (which had a knowledge of me, and was a sporting one) called
him out, and said, "I think this is a man that might suit you"—
meaning I was.

'Compeyson, he looks at me very noticing, and I look at him.

336 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

He has a watch and a chain and a ring and a breast-pin and a
handsome suit of clothes.

' ^'To judge from appearances, you're out of luck," says Com-
peyson to me.

' ''Yes, master, and I've never been in it much." (I had come
out of Kingston Jail last on a vagrancy committal. Not but what
it might have been for something else; but it warn't.)

' 'Xuck changes," says Compeyson; "perhaps yours is going to
change."

'I says, "I hope it may be so. There's room."

' "What can you do?" says Compeyson.

' "Eat and drink," I says; "if you'll find the materials."

'Compeyson laughed, looked at me again very noticing, giv me
five shillings, and appointed me for next night. Same place.

'I went to Compeyson next night, same place, and Compeyson
took me on to be his man and pardner. And what was Compey-
son's business in which we was to go pardners? Compeyson's busi-
ness was the swindling, hand-writing forging, stolen bank-note
passing, and such like. All sorts of traps as Compeyson could set
with his head, and keep his own legs out of and get the profits
from and let another man in for, was Compeyson's business. He'd
no more heart than a iron file, he was as cold as death, and he had
the head of the Devil aforementioned.

'There was another in with Compeyson, as was called Arthur —
not as being so chrisen'd, but as a surname. He was in a Decline,
and was a shadow to look at. Him and Compeyson had been in a
bad thing with a rich lady some years afore, and they'd made a
pot of money by it; but Compeyson betted and gamed, and he'd
have run through the king's taxes. So, Arthur was a dying and a
dying poor and with the horrors on him, and Compeyson's wife
(which Compeyson kicked mostly) was a having pity on him when
she could, and Compeyson was a having pity on nothing and
nobody.

'I might a took warning by Arthur, but I didn't; and I won't
pretend I was partick'ler — for where 'ud be the good on it, dear
boy and comrade? So I begun wi' Compeyson, and a poor tool I
was in his hands. Arthur lived at the top of Compeyson's house

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 337

(over nigh Brentford it was), and Compeyson kept a careful ac-
count agen him for board and lodging, in case he should ever get
better to work it out. But Arthur soon settled the account. The
second or third time as ever I see him, he come a tearing down into
Compeyson's parlour late at night, in only a flannel gown, with his
hair all in a sweat, and he says to Compeyson's wife, "Sally, she
really is upstairs alonger me, now, and I can't get rid of her. She's
all in white," he says, "wi' white flowers in her hair, and she's aw-
ful mad, and she's got a shroud hanging over her arm, and she
says she'll put it on me at five in the morning."

'Says Compeyson: "Why, you fool, don't you know she's got a
living body? And how should she be up there, without coming
through the door, or in at the window, and up the stairs?"

' "I don't know how she's there," says Arthur, shivering dread'
ful with the horrors, "but she's standing in the corner at the foot
of the bed, awful mad. And over where her heart's broke — you
broke it! — there's drops of blood."

'Compeyson spoke hardy, but he was always a coward. "Go up
alonger this drivelling sick man," he says to his wife, "and, Mag-
witch, lend her a hand, will you?" But he never come nigh
himself.

'Compeyson's wife and me took him up to bed agen, and he
raved most dreadful. "Why look at her!" he cries out. "She's a
shaking the shroud at me! Don't you see her? Look at her eyes!
Ain't it awful to see her so mad?" Next, he cries, "She'll put it on
me, and then I'm done for! Take it away from her, take it away ! "
And then he catched hold of us, and kep on a talking to her, and
answering of her, till I half-believed I see her myself.

'Compeyson's wife, being used to him, gave him some liquor to
get the horrors off, and by and by he quieted. "Oh, she's gone!
Has her keeper been for her?" he says. "Yes," says Compeyson's
wife. "Did you tell him to lock and bar her in?" "Yes." "And to
take that ugly thing away from her?" "Yes, yes, all right."
"You're a good creetur," he says, "don't leave me, whatever you
do, and thank you!"

'He rested pretty quiet till it might want a few minutes of five,
and then he starts up with a scream, and screams out, "Here she

338 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

is I She's got the shroud again. She's unfolding it. She's coming
out of the corner. She's coming to the bed. Hold me, both on you
— one of each side — don't let her touch me with it. Hah! She
missed me that time. Don't let her throw it over my shoulders.
Don't let her lift me up to get it round me. She's lifting me up.
Keep me down!" Then he lifted himself up hard, and was dead.

'Compeyson took it easy as a good riddance for both sides. Him
and me was soon busy, and first he swore me (being ever artful)
on my own book — this here little black book, dear boy, what I
swore your comrade on.

'Not to go into the things that Compeyson planned, and I done
— which 'ud take a week — I'll simply say to you, dear boy, and
Pip's comrade, that that man got me into such nets as made me his
black slave. I was always in debt to him, always under his thumb,
always a working, always a getting into danger. He was younger
than me, but he'd got craft, and he'd got learning, and he over-
matched me five hundred times told and no mercy. My Missis as
I had the hard time wi' — Stop though ! I ain't brought her in '

He looked about him in a confused way, as if he had lost his
place in the book of his remembrance; and he turned his face to
the fire, and spread his hands broader on his knees, and lifted them
off and put them on again.

'There ain't no need to go into it,' he said, looking round once
more. 'The time wi' Compeyson was a'most as hard a time as ever
I had; that said, all's said. Did I tell you as I was tried, alone, for
misdemeanour, while with Compeyson?'

I answered. No.

'Well! ' he said, 'I was, and got convicted. As to took up on sus-
picion, that was twice or three times in the four or five year that it
lasted ; but evidence was wanting. At last, me and Compeyson was
both committed for felony — on a charge of putting stolen notes in
circulation — and there was other charges behind. Compeyson says
to me "Separate defences, no communication," and that was all.
And I was so miserable poor, that I sold all the clothes I had, ex-
cept what hung on my back, afore I could get Jaggers.

'When we was put in the dock, I noticed first of all what a gen-

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 339

tleman Compeyson looked, wi' his curly hair and his black clothes
and his white pocket-handkercher, and what a common sort of
wretch I looked. When the prosecution opened and the evidence
was put short, aforehand, I noticed how heavy it all bore on me,
and how light on him. When the evidence was giv in the box, I no-
ticed how it was always me that had come for'ard, and could be
swore to, how it was always me that the money had been paid to,
how it was always me that had seemed to work the thing and get
the profit. But, when the defence come on, then I see the plan
plainer; for, says the counsellor for Compeyson, "My lord and
gentlemen, here you has afore you, side by side, two persons as
your eyes can separate wide; one, the younger, well brought up,
who will be spoke to as such; one, the elder, ill brought up, who
will be spoke to as such; one, the younger, seldom if ever seen in
these here transactions, and only suspected; t'other, the elder, al-
ways seen in 'em and always wi' his guilt brought home. Can you
doubt, if there is but one in it, which is the one, and if there is two
in it, which is much the worst one?" And such-like. And when it
come to character, warn't it Compeyson as had been to school, and
warn't it his schoolfellows as was in this position and in that, and
warn't it him as had been know'd by witnesses in such clubs and
societies, and nowt to his disadvantage? And warn't it me as had
been tried afore, and as had been know'd up hill and down dale
in Bridewells and Lock-Ups? And when it come to speech-making,
warn't it Compeyson as could speak to 'em wi' his face dropping
every now and then into his white pocket-handkercher — ah! and
wi' verses in his speech, too — and warn't it me as could only say,
"Gentlemen, this man at my side is a most precious rascal"? And
when the verdict come, warn't it Compeyson as was recommended
to mercy on account of good character and bad company, and giv-
ing up all the information he could agen me, and warn't it me as got
never a word but Guilty? And when I says to Compeyson, "Once
out of this court, I'll smash that face of yourn!" ain't it Compey-
son as prays the Judge to be protected, and gets two turnkeys
stood betwixt us? And when we're sentenced, ain't it him as gets
seven year, and me fourteen, and ain't it him as the Judge is sorry

340 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

for, because he might a done so well, and ain't it me as the Judge
perceives to be a old offender of wiolent passion, likely to come to
worse?'

He had worked himself into a state of great excitement, but he
checked it, took two or three short breaths, swallowed as often,
and stretching out his hand towards me, said, in a reassuring man-
ner, 'I ain't a-going to be low, dear boy!'

He had so heated himself that he took out his handkerchief and
wiped his face and head and neck and hands, before he could go on.

'I had said to Compeyson that I'd smash that face of his, and I
swore Lord smash mine! to do it. We was in the same prison-ship,
but I couldn't get at him for long, though I tried. At last I come
behind him and hit him on the cheek to turn him round and get a
smashing one at him, when I was seen and seized. The black-hole
of that ship warn't a strong one, to a judge of black-holes that
could swim and dive. I escaped to the shore, and I was a hiding
among the graves there, envying them as was in 'em and all over,
when I first see my boy ! '

He regarded me with a look of affection that made him almost
abhorrent to me again, though I had felt great pity for him.

^By my boy, I was giv to understand as Compeyson was out on
them marshes too. Upon my soul, I half believed he escaped in his
terror, to get quit of me, not knowing it was me as had got ashore.
I hunted him down. I smashed his face. "And now," says I, "as
the worst thing I can do, caring nothing for myself, I'll drag you
back. And I'd have swum off, towing him by the hair, if it had
come to that, and I'd a got him aboard without the soldiers.

'Of course he'd much the best of it to the last — his character was
so good. He had escaped when he was made half-wild by me and
my murderous intentions; and his punishment was light. I was put
in irons, brought to trial again, and sent for life. I didn't stop for
life, dear boy and Pip's comrade, being here.'

He wiped himself again, as he had done before, and then slowly
took his tangle of tobacco from his pocket, and plucked his pipe
from his button-hole, and slowly filled it, and began to smoke.

'Is he dead! ' I asked after a silence.

'Is who dead, dear boy?'

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 341

'Compeyson.'

'He hopes / am, if he's alive, you may be sure/ with a fierce
look. 'I never heard no more of him.'

Herbert had been writing with his pencil in the cover of a book.
He softly pushed the book over to me, as Provis stood smoking
with his eyes on the fire, and I read in it:

'Young Havisham's name was Arthur. Compeyson is the man
who professed to be Miss Havisham's lover.'

I shut the book and nodded slightly to Herbert, and put the
book by; but we neither of us said anything, and both looked at
Provis as he stood smoking by the fire

CHAPTER XLHI

Why should I pause to ask how much of my shrinking from Pro-
vis might be traced to Estella? Why should I loiter on my road, to
compare the state of mind in which I had tried to rid myself of the
stain of the prison before meeting her at the coach-office, with the
state of mind in which I now reflected on the abyss between Estella
in her pride and beauty, and the returned transport whom I har-
boured? The road would be none the smoother for it, the end
would be none the better for it; he would not be helped, nor I
extenuated.

A new fear had been engendered in my mind by this narrative;
or rather, his narrative had given form and purpose to the fear
that was already there. If Compeyson were alive and should dis-
cover his return, I could hardly doubt the consequence. That
Compeyson stood in mortal fear of him, neither of the two could
know much better than I ; and that any such man as that man had
been described to be, would hesitate to release himself for good
from a dreaded enemy by the safe means of becoming an informer,
was scarcely to be imagined.

Never had I breathed, and never would I breathe — or so I re-

342 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

solved — a word of Estella to Provis. But, I said to Herbert that
before I could go abroad, I must see both Estella and Miss Havi-
sham. This was when we were left alone on the night of the day
when Provis told us his story. I resolved to go out to Richmond
next day, and I went.

On my presenting myself at Mrs. Brandley's, Estella's maid was
called to tell me that Estella had gone into the country. Where?
To Satis House, as usual. Not as usual, I said, for she had never
yet gone there without me; when was she coming back? There
was an air of reservation in the answer which increased my per-
plexity, and the answer was that her maid believed she was only
coming back at all for a little while. I could make nothing of this,
except that it was meant that I should make nothing of it, and I
went home again in complete discomfiture.

Another night-consultation with Herbert after Provis was gone
home (I always took him home, and always looked well about me),
led us to the conclusion that nothing should be said about going
abroad until I came back from Miss Havisham's. In the meantime
Herbert and I were to consider separately what it would be best to
say; whether we should devise any pretence of being afraid that
he was under suspicious observation; or whether I, who had never
yet been abroad, should propose an expedition. We bo'h knew that
I had but to propose anything, and he would consent. We agreed
that his remaining many days in his present hazard was not to be
thought of.

Next day, I had the meanness to feign that I was under a bind-
ing promise to go down to Joe; but I was capable of almost any
meanness towards Joe or his name. Provis was to be strictly care-
ful while I was gone, and Herbert was to take the charge of him
that I had taken. I was to be absent only one night, and, on my
return, the gratification of his impatience for my starting as a gen-
tleman on ?. greater scale, was to be begun. It occurred to me then,
and as I afterwards found to Herbert also, that he might be best
got away across the water, on that pretence — as, to make pur-
chases, or the like.

Having thus cleared the way for my expedition to Miss Havi-
sham's, I set off by the early morning coach before it was yet light,

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 343

and was out in the open country-road when the day came creeping
on, halting and whimpering and shivering, and wrapped in patches
of cloud and rags of mist, like a beggar. When we drove up to the
Blue Boar after a drizzly ride, whom should I see come out under
the gateway, toothpick in hand, to look at the coach, but Bentley
Drummle!

As he pretended not to see me, I pretended not to see him. It
was a very lame pretence on both sides; the lamer, because we
both went into the coffee-room, where he had just finished his
breakfast, and where I had ordered mine. It was poisonous to me
to see him in the town, for I very well knew why he had come
there.

Pretending to read a smeary newspaper long out of date, which
had nothing half so legible in its local news, as the foreign matter
of coffee, pickles, fish-sauces, gravy, melted butter, and wine, with
which it was sprinkled all over, as if it had taken the measles in a
highly irregular form, I sat at my table while he stood before the
fire. By degrees it became an enormous injury to me that he stood
before the fire. And I got up, determined to have my share of it. I
had to put my hands behind his legs for the poker when I went up
to the fire-place to stir the fire, but still pretended not to know
him.

*Is this a cut?' said Mr. Drummle.

'Oh?' said I, poker in hand; 'it's you, is it? How do you do? I
was wondering who it was, who kept the fire off.'

With that I poked tremendously, and having done so, planted
myself side by side with Mr. Drummle, my shoulders squared, and
my back to the fire.

'You have just come down?' said Mr. Drummle, edging me a
little away with his shoulder.

'Yes,' said I, edging him a little away with my shoulder.

'Beastly place,' said Drummle. 'Your part of the country, I
think?'

'Yes,' I assented. 'I am told it's very like your Shropshire.'

'Not in the least like it,' said Drummle.

Here Mr. Drummle looked at his boots, and I looked at mine,
and then Mr. Drummle looked at my boots and I looked at his.

344 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

'Have you been here long?' I asked, determined not to yield an
inch of the fire.

'Long enough to be tired of it,' returned Drummle, pretending to
yawn, but equally determined.

'Do you stay here long?'

'Can't say,' answered Mr. Drummle. 'Do you?'

'Can't say,' said I.

I felt here, through a tingling in my blood, that if Mr.
Drummle's shoulder had claimed another hair's breadth of room, I
should have jerked him into the window; equally, that if my
shoulder had urged a similar claim, Mr. Drummle would have
jerked me into the nearest box. He whistled a little. So did I.

'Large tract of marshes about here, I believe?' said Drummle.

'Yes. What of that?' said I.

Mr. Drummle looked at me, and then at my boots, and then
said, 'Oh!' and laughed.

'Are you amused, Mr. Drummle?'

'No,' said he, 'not particularly. I am going out for a ride in the
saddle. I mean to explore those marshes for amusement. Out-of-
the-way villages there, they tell me. Curious little public-houses —
and smithies — and that. Waiter!'

'Yes, sir.'

'Is that horse of mine ready?'

'Brought round to the door, sir.'

'I say. Look here, you sir. The lady won't ride to-day; the
weather won't do.'

'Very good, sir.'

'And I don't dine, because I am going to dine at the lady's.

'Very good, sir.'

Then, Drummle glanced at me, with an insolent triumph on his
great- jowled face that cut me to the heart, dull as he was, and so
exasperated me, that I felt inclined to take him in my arms (as the
robber in the story-book is said to have taken the old lady) and
seat him on the fire.

One thing was manifest to both of us, and that was, that until
relief came, neither of us could relinquish the fire. There we stood,
well squared up before it, shoulder to shoulder and foot to foot,

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 345

with our hands behind us, not budging an inch. The horse was vis-
ible outside in the drizzle at the door, my breakfast was put on
table, Drummle's was cleared away, the waiter invited me to be-
gin, I nodded, we both stood our ground.

'Have you been to the Grove since?' said Drummle.

'No,' said I, 'I had quite enough of the Finches the last time I
was there.'

'Was that when we had a difference of opinion?'

'Yes,' I replied very shortly.

'Come, come! they let you off easily enough,' sneered Drummle-
'You shouldn't have lost your temper.'

'Mr. Drummle,' said I, 'you are not competent to give advice on
that subject. When I lose my temper (not that I admit having
done so on that occasion), I don't throw glasses.'

'I do,' said Drummle.

After glancing at him once or twice, in an increased state of
smouldering ferocity, I said:

'Mr. Drummle, I did not seek this conversation, and I don't
think it's an agreeable one.'

'I am sure it's not,' said he, superciliously over his shoulder; T
don't think anything about it.'

'And therefore,' I went on, 'with your leave, I will suggest that
we hold no kind of communication in future.'

'Quite my opinion,' said Drummle, 'and what I should have sug-
gested myself, or done — more likely — without suggesting. But
don't lose your temper. Haven't you lost enough without that?'

'What do you mean, sir?'

'Waiter,' said Drummle, by way of answering me.

The waiter reappeared.

'Look here, you sir. You quite understand that the young lady
don't ride to-day, and that I dine at the young lady's?'

'Quite so, sir?'

When the waiter had felt my fast cooling tea-pot with the palm
of his hand, and had looked imploringly at me, and had gone out,
Drummle, careful not to move the shoulder next me, took a cigar
from his pocket and bit the end off, but showed no sign of stirring.
Choking and boiling as I was, I felt that we could not go a word

346 GREAT EXPIX TATIONS

further, without introducing Estella's name, which I could not en-
dure to hear him utter; and therefore I looked stonily at the op-
posite wall, as if there were no one present, and forced myself to
silence. How long we might have remained in this ridiculous posi-
tion it is impossible to say, but for the incursion of three thriving
farmers — laid on by the waiter, I think — who came into the coffee-
room unbuttoning their great-coats and rubbing their hands, and
before whom, as they charged at the fire, we were obliged to give
way.

I saw him through the window, seizing his horse's mane, and
mounting in his blundering brutal manner, and siding and back-
ing away. I thought he was gone, when he came back, calling for
a light for the cigar in his mouth, which he had forgotten. A man
in a dust-coloured dress appeared with what was wanted — I could
not have said from where: whether from the inn yard, or the street,
or where not — and as Drummle leaned down from the saddle and
lighted his cigar and laughed, with a jerk of his head towards the
coffee-room windows, the slouching shoulders, and ragged hair, of
this man, whose back was towards me, reminded me of Orlick.

Too heavily out of sorts to care much at the time whether it
were he or no, or after all to touch the breakfast, I washed the
weather and the journey from my face and hands, and went out to
the memorable old house that it would have been so much the
better for me never to have entered, never to have seen.

CHAPTER XLIV

In the room where the dressing-table stood, and where the wax
candles burnt on the walls, I found Miss Havisham and Estella;
Miss Havisham seated on a settee near the fire, and Estella on a
cushion at her feet. Estella was knitting, and Miss Havisham was
looking on. They both raised their eyes as I went in, and both saw
ap alteration in me. I derived that, from the look they inter-
changed.

*Aiid what wind,' said Miss Havisham, 'blows you here, Pip?*

I

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 347

Though she looked steadily at me, I saw that she was rather
confused. Estella, pausing a moment in her knitting with her eyes
upon me, and then going on, I fancied that I read in the action of
her fingers, as plainly as if she had told me in the dumb alphabet,
that she perceived I had discovered my real benefactor.

'Miss Havisham,' said I, 'I went to Richmond yesterday, to
speak to Estella; and finding that some wind had blown her here,
I followed.'

Miss Havisham motioning to me for the third or fourth time to
sit down, I took the chair by the dressing-table, which I had often
seen her occupy. With all that ruin at my feet, and about me, it
seemed a natural place for me, that day.

'What I had to say to Estella, IVIiss Havisham, I will say before
you, presently — in a few moments. It will not surprise you. it will
not displease you. I am as unhappy as you can ever have meant
me to be.'

Miss Havisham continued to look steadily at me. I could see
in the action of Estella's fingers as they worked, that she attended
to what I said: but she did not look up.

'I have found out who my patron is. It is not a fortunate dis-
covery, and is not likely ever to enrich me in reputation, station,
fortune, anything. There are reasons why I must say no more of
that. It is not my secret, but another's.'

As I was silent for a while, looking at Estella and considering
how to go on. Miss Havisham repeated, 'It is not your secret, but
another's. Weil?'

'When you first caused me to be brought here, Miss Havisham;
when I belonged to the village over yonder, that I wish I had never
left; I suppose I did really come here, as any other chance boy
might have come — as a kind of servant, to gratify a want or a
whim, and to be paid for it?'

'Ay, Pip,' replied Miss Havisham, steadily nodding her head;
'you did.'

'And that Mr. Jaggers '

'Mr. Jaggers,' said Miss Havisham, taking me up in a firm tone,
'had nothing to do with it, and knew nothing of it. His being my
lawyer, and his being the lawyer of your patron, is a coincidence.

348 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

He holds the same relation towards numbers of people, and it
might easily arise. Be that as it may, it did arise, and was not
brought about by any one.'

Any one might have seen in her haggard face that there was no
suppression or evasion so far.

'But when I fell into the mistake I have so long remained in, at
least you led me on?' said I.

'Yes,' she returned, again nodding steadily, 'I let you go on.'

'Was that kind?'

'Who am I,' cried Miss Havisham, striking her stick upon the
floor and flashing into wrath so suddenly that Estella glanced up
at her in surprise, 'who am I, for God's sake, that I should be
kind?'

It was a weak complaint to have made, and I had not meant to
make it. I told her so, as she sat brooding over this outburst.

'Well, well, well!' she said. 'What else?'

'I was liberally paid for my old attendance here,' I said, to
soothe her, 'in being apprenticed, and I have asked these questions
only for my own information. What follows has another (and I
hope more disinterested) purpose. In humouring my mistake, Miss
Havisham, you punished — practised on — perhaps you will supply
whatever term expresses your intention, without offence — your
self-seeking relations?'

'I did. Why, they would have it so! So would you. What has
been my history, that I should be at the pains of entreating either
them or you not to have it so! You made your own snares. /
never made them.'

Waiting until she was quiet again — for this, too, flashed out of
her in a wild and sudden way — I went on.

'I have been thrown among one family of your relations, Miss
Havisham, and have been constantly among them since I went to
London. I know them to have been as honestly under my de-
lusions as I myself. And I should be false and base if I did not tell
you, whether it is acceptable to you or no, and whether you are in-
clined to give credence to it or no, that you deeply wrong both Mr.
Matthew Pocket and his son Herbert, if you suppose them to be

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 349

otherwise than generous, upright, open, and incapable of anything
designing or mean.'

'They are your friends,' said Miss Havisham.

'They made themselves my friends,' said I, 'when they supposed
me to have superseded them ; and when Sarah Pocket, Miss Geor-
giana, and Mistress Camilla, were not my friends, I think.'

This contrasting of them with the rest seemed, I was glad to see,
to do them good with her. She looked at me keenly for a little
while, and then said quietly:

'What do you want for them?'

'Only,' said I, 'that you would not confound them with the oth-
ers. They may be of the same blood, but, believe me, they are not
of the same nature.'

Still looking at me keenly. Miss Havisham repeated:

'What do you want for them?'

T am not so cunning, you see,' I said in answer, conscious that
I reddened a little, 'as that I could hide from you, even if I de-
sired, that I do want something. Miss Havisham, if you could spare
the money to do my friend Herbert a lasting service in life, but
which from the nature of the case must be done without his knowl-
edge, I could show you how.'

'Why must it be done without his knowledge?' she asked, set-
tling her hands upon her stick, that she might regard me the more
attentively.

■ 'Because,' said I, 'I began the service myself, more than two
years ago, without his knowledge, and I don't want to be betrayed.
Why I fail in my ability to finish it, I cannot explain. It is a part
of the secret which is another person's and not mine.'

She gradually withdrew her eyes from me, and turned them on
the fire. After watching it for what appeared in the silence and by
the light of the slowly wasted candles to be a long time, she was
roused by the collapse of some of the red coals, and looked towards
me again — at first, vacantly — then, with a gradually concentrating
attention. All this time, Estella knitted on. When Miss Havisham
had fixed her attention on me, she said, speaking as if there had
been no lapse in our dialogue:

350 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

What else?'

'Estella/ said I, turning to her now, and trying to command my
trembling voice, 'you know I love you. You know that I have
loved you long and dearly.'

She raised her eyes to my face, on being thus addressed, and her
fingers plied their work, and she looked at me with an unmoved
countenance. I saw that Miss Havisham glanced from me to her,
and from her to me.

'I should have said this sooner, but for my long mistake. It
induced me to hope that Miss Havisham meant us for one another.
While I thought you could not help yourself, as it were, I refrained
from saying it. But I must say it now.'

Preserving her unmoved countenance, and with her fingers still
going, Estella shook her head.

'1 know,' said I, in answer to that action; ^I know. I have no
hope that I shall ever call you mine, Estella. I am ignorant what
may become of me very soon, how poor I may be, or where I may
go. Still, I love you. I have loved you ever since I first saw you
in this house.'

Looking at me perfectly unmoved and with her fingers busy, she
shook her head again.

'It would have been crdel in Miss Havisham, horribly cruel, to
practise on the susceptibility of a poor boy, and to torture me
through all these years, with a vain hope and an idle pursuit, if she
had reflected on the gravity of what she did. But I think she did
not. I think that in the endurance of her own trial, she forgot
mine, Estella.'

I saw Miss Havisham put her hand to her heart and hold it
there, as she sat looking by turns at Estella and at me.

'It seems,' said Estella, very calmly, 'that there are sentiments,
fancies — I don't know how to call them — which I am not able to
comprehend. When you say you love me, I know what you mean,
as a form of words; but nothing more. You address nothing in my
breast, you touch nothing there. I don't care for what you say at
all. I have tried to warn you of this; now, have I not?'

I said in a miserable manner, 'Yes.'

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 351

^Yes. But you would not be warned, for you thought I did not
mean it. Now, did you not think so?'

*I thought and hoped you could not mean it. You, so young, un-
tried, and beautiful, Estella! Surely it is not in Nature.'

'It is in my nature,' she returned. And then she added, with a
stress upon the words, 'It is in the nature formed within me. I
make a great difference between you and all other people when I
say so much. I can do no more.'

'Is it not true,' said I, 'that Bentley Drummle is in town here,
and pursuing you?'

'It is quite true,' she replied, referring to him with the indif-
ference of utter contempt.

'That you encourage him, and ride out with him, and that he
dines with you this very day?'

She seemed a little surprised that I should know it, but again
relied, 'Quite true.'

'You cannot love him, Estella?'

Her fingers stopped for the first time, as she retorted rather an-
grily, 'What have I told you? Do you still think, in spite of it,
that I do not mean what I say?'

'You would never marry him, Estella?'

She looked towards Miss Havisham, and considered for a mom-
ent with her work in her hands. Then she said, 'Why not tell you
the truth? I am going to be married to him.'

I dropped my face into my hands, but was able to control my-
self better than I could have expected, considering what agony it
gave me to hear her say those words. When I raised my face
again, there was such a ghastly look upon Miss Havisham 's, that
it impressed me, even in my passionate hurry and grief.

'Estella, dearest, dearest Estella, do not let Miss Havisham lead
you into this fatal step. Put me aside for ever — you have done so,
I well know — but bestow yourself on some worthier person than
Drummle. Miss Havisham gives you to him, as the greatest slight
and injury that could be done to the many far better men who ad-
mire you, and to the few who truly love you. Among those few,
there may be one who loves you even as dearly, though he has not

352 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

loved you as long, as I. Take him, and I can bear it better for
your sake ! '

My earnestness awoke a wonder in her that seemed as if it
would have been touched with compassion, if she could have ren-
dered me at all intelligible to her own mind.

'I am going,' she said again, in a gentler voice, 'to be married to
him. The preparations for my marriage are making, and I shall be
married soon. Why do you injuriously introduce the name of my
mother by adoption? It is my own act.'

'Your own act, Estella, to fling yourself away upon a brute?'

'On whom should I fling myself away?' she retorted, with a
smile. 'Should I fling myself away upon the man who would the
soonest feel (if people do feel such things) that I took nothing to
him? There! It is done. I shall do well enough, and so will my
husband. As to leading me into what you call this fatal step, Miss
Havisham would have had me wait, and not marry yet ; but I am
tired of the life I have led, which has very few charms for me, and
I am willing enough to change it. Say no more. We shall never
understand each other.'

'Such a mean brute, such a stupid brute! ' I urged in despair.

'Don't be afraid of my being a blessing to him,' said Estella; T
shall not be that. Come! Here is my hand. Do we part on this,
you visionary boy — or man?'

'O Estella!' I answered, as my bitter tears fell fast on her hand,
do what I would to restrain them ; 'even if I remained in England
and could hold my head up with the rest, how could I see you
Drummle's wife?'

'Nonsense,' she returned, 'nonsense. This will pass in no time.'

'Never, Estella!'

'You will get me out of your thoughts in a week.'

'Out of my thoughts! You are part of my existence, part of my-
self. You have been in every line I have ever read, since I first
came here, the rough common boy whose poor heart you wounded
even then. You have been in every prospect I have ever seen since —
on the river, on the sails of the ships, on the marshes, in the clouds,
in the light, in the darkness, in the wind, in the woods, in the sea,

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 353

in the streets. You have been the embodiment of every graceful
fancy that my mind has ever become acquainted with. The stones
of which the strongest London buildings are made are not more
real, or more impossible to be displaced by your hands, than your
presence and influence have been to me, there and everywhere, and
will be. Estella, to the last hour of my life, you cannot choose but
remain part of my character, part of the little good in me, part of
the evil. But, in this separation I associate you only with the good,
and I will faithfully hold you to that always, for you must have
done me far more good than harm, let me feel now what sharp dis-
tress I may. O God bless you, God forgive you!'

In what ecstasy of unhappiness I got these broken words out of
myself, I don't know. The rhapsody welled up within me, like
blood from an inward wound, and gushed out. I held her hand to
my lips some lingering moments, and so I left her. But ever after-
wards, I remembered — and soon afterwards with stronger reason
— that while Estella looked at me merely with incredulous wonder,
the spectral figure of Miss Havisham, her hand still covering her
heart, seemed all resolved into a ghastly stare of pity and remorse.

All done, all gone! So much was done and gone, that when I
went out at the gate, the light of day seemed of a darker colour
than when I went in. For a while, I hid myself among some lanes
and by-paths, and then struck off to walk all the way to London.
For, I had by that time come to myself so far, as to consider that I
could not go back to the inn and see Drummle there ; that I could
not bear to sit upon the coach and be spoken to; that I could do
nothing half so good for myself as tire myself out.

It was past midnight when I crossed London Bridge. Pursuing
the narrow intricacies of the streets which at that time tended
westward near the Middlesex shore of the river, my readiest access
to the Temple was close by the river-side, through Whitefriars. I
was not expected till to-morrow, but I had my keys, and, if Her-
bert were gone to bed, could get to bed myself without disturbing
him.

As it seldom happened that I came in at that Whitefriars gate
after the Temple was closed, and as I was very muddy and weary,

364 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

I did not take it ill that the night-porter examined me with much
attention as he held the gate a little way open for me to pass in.
To help his memory I mentioned my name.

'I was not quite sure, sir, but I thought so. Here's a note, sir.
The messenger that brought it, said would you be so good as read
it by my lantern?'

Much surprised by the request, I took the note. It was directed
to Philip Pip, Esquire, and on the top of the supersciption were the
words, Tlease read this here.' I opened it, the watchman hold-
ing up his light, and read inside, in Wemmick's writing:

'Don't go Home.'

CHAPTER XLV

Turning from the Temple gate as soon as I had read the warning,
I made the best of my way to Fleet Street, and there got a late
hackney chariot and drove to the Hummums in Covent Garden. In
those times a bed was always to be got there at any hour of the
night, and the chamberlain, letting me in at his ready wicket,
lighted the candle next in order on his shelf, and showed me
straight into the bedroom next in order on his list. It was a sort of
vault on the ground floor at the back, with a despotic monster of a
fcvir-po«;t bedstead in it, straddling over the whole place, putting
one of his arbitrary legs into the fire-place, and another into the
doorway, and squeezing the wretched little washing-stand in quite
a Divinely Righteous manner.

As I had asked for a night-light, the chamberlain had brought
me in, before he left me, the good old constitutional rush-light of
those virtuous days — an object like the ghost of a walking-cane,
which instantly broke its back if it were touched, which nothing
could ever be lighted at, and which was placed in solitary confine-
ment at the bottom of a high tin tower, perforated with round holes
that made a staringly wide-awake pattern on the walls. When I
had got into bed, and lay there, footsore, weary, and wretched, I
found that I could no more close my own eyes than I could close

1

i

I

"Don't go home.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 355

the eyes of this foolish Argus. And thus, in the gloom and death
of the night, we stared at one another.

What a doleful night! How anxious, how dismal, how long!
There was an inhospitable smell in the room, of cold soot and hot
dust; and, as I looked up into the corners of the tester over my
head, I thought what a number of blue-bottle flies from the butch-
er's, and earwigs from the market, and grubs from the country,
must be holding on up there, lying by for next summer. This led
me to speculate whether any of them ever tumbled down, and then
I fancied that I felt light falls on my face — a disagreeable turn of
thought, suggesting other and more objectionable approaches up
my back. When I had lain awake a little while, those extraor-
dinary voices with which silence teems, began to make themselves
audible. The closet whispered, the fireplace sighed, the little wash-
ing-stand ticked, and one guitar-string played occasionally in the
chest of drawers. At about the same time, the eyes on the wall ac-
quired a new expression, and in every one of those staring rounds I
saw written. Don't go Home.

Whatever night-fancies and night-noises crowded on me, they
never warded off this Don't go Home. It plaited itself into what-
ever I thought of, as a bodily pain would have done. Not long
before, I had read in the newspapers how a gentleman unknown
had come to the Hummums in the night, and had gone to bed, and
had destroyed himself, and had been found in the morning welter-
ing in blood. It came into my head that he must have occupied
this very vault of mine, and I got out of bed to assure myself that
there were no red marks about; then opened the door to look out
into the passages, and cheer myself with the companionship of a
distant light, near which I knew the chamberlain to be dozing.
But all this time, why I was not to go home, and what had hap-
pened at home, and when I should go home, and whether Provis
was safe at home, were questions occupying my mind so busily,
that one might have supposed there could be no more room in it for
any other theme. Even when I thought of Estella, and how we had
parted that day for ever, and when I recalled all the circumstances
of our parting, and all her looks and tones, and the action of her
fingers while she knitted — even then I was pursuing, here and there

356 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

and everywhere, the caution Don't go home. When at last I dozed,
in sheer exhaustion of mind and body, it became a vast shadowy
verb which I had to conjugate, Imperative mood, present tense:
Do not thou go home, let him not go home, let us not go home, do
not ye or you go home, let not them go home. Then, potentially;
I may not and I cannot go home; and I might not, could not,
would not, and should not go home; until I felt that I was going
distracted, and rolled over on the pillow, and looked at the staring
rounds upon the wall again.

I had left directions that I was to be called at seven ; for it was
plain that I must see Wemmick before seeing any one else, and
equally plain that this was a case in which his Walworth senti-
ments, only, could be taken. It was a relief to get out of the room
where the night had been so miserable, and I needed no second
knocking at the door to startle me from my uneasy bed.

The Castle battlements arose upon my view at eight o'clock.
The little servant happening to be entering the fortress with two
hot rolls, I passed through the postern and crossed the drawbridge,
in her company, and so came without announcement into the
presence of Wemmick as he was making tea for himself and the
Aged. An open door afforded a perspective view of the Aged in
bed.

'Halloa, Mr. Pip!' said Wemmick. 'You did come home, then?'

'Yes,' I returned; 'but I didn't go home.'

'That's all right,' said he, rubbing his hands. T left p note for
you at each of the Temple gates, on the chance. Which gate did
you come to?'

I told him.

'I'll go round to the others in the course of the day and destroy
the notes,' said Wemmick; 'it's a good rule never to leave docu-
mentary evidence if you can help it, because you don't know when
it may be put in. I'm going to take a liberty with you — Would
you mind toasting this sausage for the Aged P.?

I said I should be delighted to do it.

'Then you can go about your work, Mary Anne,' said Wemmick
to the little servant; 'which leaves us to ourselves, don't you see,
Mr. Pip?' he added, winking, as she disappeared.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 357

I thanked him for his friendship and caution, and our discourse
proceeded in a low tone, while I toasted the Aged's sausage and he
buttered the crumb of the Aged's roll.

'Now, Mr. Pip, you know,' said Wemmick, 'you and I under-
stand one another. We are in our private and personal capacities
and we have been engaged in a confidential transaction before
to-day. Official sentiments are one thing. We are extra official.'

I cordially assented. I was so very nervous, that I had already
lighted the Aged's sausage like a torch, and been obliged to blow
it out.

'I accidentally heard, yesterday morning,' said Wemmick, 'being
in a certain place where I once took you — even between you and
me, it's as well not to mention names when avoidable '

'Much better not,' said I. 'I understand you.'

'I heard there by chance, yesterday morning,' said Wemmick.
*that a certain person not altogether of uncolonial pursuits, and
not unpossessed of portable property — I don't know who it may
really be — we won't name this person '

'Not necessary,' said I.

' — had made some little stir in a certain part of the world where
a good many people go, not always in gratification of their own
inclinations, and not quite irrespective of the government ex-
pense '

In watching his face, I made quite a firework of the Aged's sau-
sage, and greatly discomposed both my own attention and Wem-
mick's; for which I apologised.

' — by disappearing from such place, and being no more heard of
thereabouts. From which,' said Wemmick, 'conjectures had been
raised anr' heories formed. I also heard that you at your cham-
bers in Garden Court, Temple, had been watched, and might be
watched again.'

'By whom?' said I.

'I wouldn't go into that,' s^iid Wemmick, evasively, 'it might
clash with official responsibilities. I heard it, as I have in my time
heard other curious things in the same place. I don't tell it you on
information received. I heard it.'

He took the toasting-fork and sausage from me as he spoke,

358 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

and set forth the Aged's breakfast neatly on a little tray. Pre-
vious to placing it before him, he went into the Aged's room with
a clean white cloth, and tied the same under the old gentleman's
chin, and propped him up, and put his night cap on one side, and
gave him quite a rakish air. Then, he placed his breakfast before
him with great care, and said. All right, ain't you, Aged P.?' To
which the cheerful Aged replied, 'All right, John, my boy, all
right ! ' As there seemed to be a tacit understanding that the Aged
was not in a presentable state, and was therefore to be considered
invisible, I made a pretence of being in complete ignorance of
these proceedings.

This watching of me at my chambers (which I have once had
reason to suspect),' I said to Wemmick when he came back, 'is in-
separable from the person to whom you have adverted; is it?'

Wemmick looked very serious. 'I couldn't undertake to say that,
of my own knowledge. I mean, I couldn't undertake to say it was
at first. But it either is, or it will be, or it's in great danger of be-
ing.'

As I saw that he was restrained by fealty to Little Britain from
saying as much as he could, and as I knew with thankfulness to
him how far out of his way he went to say what he did, I could not
press him. But I told him, after a little meditation over the fire,
that I would like to ask him a question, subject to his answering
or not answering, as he deemed right, and sure that his course
would be right. He paused in his breakfast, and crossing his arms,
and pinching his shirt-sleeves (his notion of indoor comfort was
to sit without any coat) , he nodded to me once, to put my question.

'You have heard of a man of bad character, whose true name is
Compeyson?'

He answered with one other nod.

'Is he living?'

One other nod.

'Is he in London?'

He gave me one other nod, compressed the post-office exceeding-
ly, gave me one last nod, and went on with his breakfast.

'Now,' said Wemmick, 'questioning being over'; which he em-
phasised and repeated for my guidance; 'I come to what I did,

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 359

after hearing what I heard. I went to Garden Court to find you;
not finding you, I went to Clarriker's to find Mr. Herbert.'

'And him you found?' said I, with great anxiety.

'And him I found. Without mentioning any names or going in-
to any details, I gave him to understand that if he was aware of
anybody — Tom, Jack, or Richard — being about the chambers, or
about the immediate neighbourhood, he had better get Tom, Jack,
or Richard, out of the way while you were out of the way.'

'He would be greatly puzzled what to do?'
: 'He was puzzled what to do; not the less, because I gave him my
opinion that it was not safe to try to get Tom, Jack, or Richard,
too far out of the way at present. Mr. Pip, I'll tell you something.
Under existing circumstances there is no place like a great city
when you are once in it. Don't break cover too soon. Lie close.
Wait till things slacken, before you try the open, even for foreign
air.'

I thanked him for his valuable advice, and asked him what Her-
bert had done?

'Mr. Herbert,' said Wemmick, 'after being all of a heap for half
an hour, struck out a plan. He mentioned to me as a secret, that
he is courting a young lady who has, as no doubt you are aware, a
bed-ridden Pa. Which Pa, having been in the Purser line of life,
lies a-bed in a bow-window where he can see the ships sail up and
down the river. You are acquainted with the young lady, most
probably?'

'Not personally,' said I.

The truth was, that she had objected to me as an expensive com-
panion who did Herbert no good, and that, when Herbert had first
proposed to present me to her, she had received the proposal with
such very moderate warmth, that Herbert had felt himself ob-
liged to confide the state of the case to me, with a view to the
lapse of a little time before I made her acquaintance. When I had
begun to advance Herbert's prospects by stealth, I had been able
to bear this with cheerful philosophy; he and his affianced, for
their part, had naturally not been very anxious to introduce a
third person into their interview; and thus, although I was assured
that I had risen in Clara's esteem, and although the young lady

360 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

and I had long regularly interchanged messages and remembrances
by Herbert, I had never seen her. However, I did not trouble
Wemmick with those particulars.

The house with the bow-window,' said Wemmick, 'being by the
river-side, down the pool there between Limehouse and Greenwich,
and being kept, it seems, by a very respectable widow, who has
a furnished upper floor to let, Mr. Herbert put it to me, what did
I think of that as a temporary tenement for Tom, Jack, or Rich-
ard? Now, I thought very well of it, for three reasons I'll give you.
That is to say. Firstly. It's altogether out of all your beats, and
is well away from the usual heap of streets great and small. Sec-
ondly. Without going near it yourself, you could always hear of
the safety of Tom, Jack, or Richard, through Mr. Herbert. Third-
ly. After a while and when it might be prudent, if you should want
to slip Tom, Jack, or Richard, on board a foreign packet-boat,
there he is — ready.'

Much comforted by these considerations, I thanked Wemmick
again and again, and begged him to proceed.

'Well, sir! Mr. Herbert threw himself into the business with a
will, and by nine o'clock last night he housed Tom, Jack, or Rich-
ard— whichever it may be — you and I don't want to know — <5uite
successfully. At the old lodgings it was understood that he was
summoned to Dover, and in fact he was taken down the Dover
road and cornered out of it. Now, another great advantage of all
this is, that it was done without you, and when, if any one was
concerning himself about your movements, you must be known
to be ever so many miles off, and quite otherwise engaged. This
diverts suspicion and confuses it; and for the same reason I recom-
mended that even if you came back last night, you should not go
home. It brings in more confusion, and you want confusion.'

Wemmick, having finished his breakfast, here looked at his
watch, and began to get his coat on.

'And now, Mr. Pip,' said he, with his hands still in the sleeves,
'I have probably done the most I can do; but if I can ever do
more — from a Walworth point of view, and in a strictly private
and personal capacity — I shall be glad to do it. Heme's the address.
There can be no harm in your going here to-night and seeing for

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 361

yourself that all is well with Tom, Jack, or Richard, before you go
home — which is another reason for your not going home last night.
But after you have gone home, don't go back here. You are very
welcome, I am sure, Mr. Pip'; his hands were now out of his
sleeves, and I was shaking them; 'and let me finally impress one
important point upon you.' He laid his hands upon my shoulders,
and added in a solemn whisper: 'Avail yourself of this evening to
lay hold of his portable property. You don't know what may hap-
pen to him. Don't let anything happen to the portable property.'

Quite despairing of making my mind clear to Wemmick on this
point, I forebore to try.

'Time's up,' said Wemmick, 'and I must be off. If you had
nothing more pressing to do than to keep here till dark, that's what
I should advise. You look very much worried, and it would do
you good to have a perfectly quiet day with the Aged — he'll be up
presently — and a little bit of — you remember the pig?'

'Of course,' said I.

'Well; and a little bit of him. That sausage you toasted was his,
and he was in all respects a first-rater. Do try him, if it is only for
old acquaintance sake. Good-bye, Aged Parent! ' in a cheery shout.

'All right, John; all right, my boy!' piped the old man from
within.

I soon fell asleep before Wemmick's fire, and the Aged and I
enjoyed one another's society by falling asleep before it more or
less all day. We had loin of pork for dinner, and greens grown on
the estate, and I nodded at the Aged with a good intention when-
ever I failed to do it drowsily. When it was quite dark, I left the
Aged preparing the fire for toast; and I inferred from the number
of tea-cups, as well as from his glances at the two little doors in the
wall, that Miss Skiffins was expected.

CHAPTER XL VI

Eight o'clock had struck before I got into the air that was scent-
ed, not disagreeably, by the chips and shavings of the long-shore
boat-builders, and mast, oar, and block makers. All that water-side

362 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

region of the upper and lower Pool below Bridge, was unknown
ground to me, and when I struck down by the river, I found that
the spot I wanted was not where I had supposed it to be, and was
anything but easy to find. It was called Mill Pond Bank, Chink's
Basin; and I had no other guide to Chink's Basin than the Old
Green Copper Rope-Walk.

It matters not what stranded ships repairing in dry docks I lost
myself among, what old hulls of ships in course of being knocked
to pieces, what ooze and slime and other dregs of tide, what yards
of ship-builders and ship-breakers, what rusty anchors blindly
biting into the ground though for years off duty, what mountainous
country of accumulated casks and timber, how many rope-walks
that were not the Old Green Copper. After several times falling
short of my destination and as often over-shooting it, I came un-
expectedly round a corner, upon Mill Pond Bank. It was a fresh
kind of place, all circumstances considered, where the wind from
the river had room to turn itself round; and there were two or
three trees in it, and there was the stump of a ruined windmill,
and there was the Old Green Copper Rope-Walk — whose long and
narrow vista I could trace in the moonlight, along a series of wood-
en frames set in the ground, that looked like superannuated hay-
making-rakes which had grown old and lost most of their teeth.

Selecting from the few queer houses upon Mill Pond Bank, a
house with a wooden front and three stories of bow-window (not
bay-window, which is another thing), I looked at the plate upon
the door, and read there Mrs. W^himple. That being the name I
wanted, I knocked, and an elderly woman of a pleasant and thriv-
ing appearance responded. She was immediately deposed, however,
by Herbert, who silently led me into the parlour and shut the door.
It was an odd sensation to see his very familiar face established
quite at home in that very unfamiliar room and region; and I
found myself looking at him, much as I looked at the corner cup-
board with the glass and china, the shells upon the chimney-piece,
and the coloured engravings on the wall, representing the death
of Captain Cook, a ship-launch, and his Majesty King George the
Third in a state coachman's wig, leather breeches, and top-boots,
on the terrace at Windsor,

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 363

'All is well, Handel/ said Herbert, 'and he is quite satisfied,
though eager to see you. My dear girl is with her father; and if
you'll wait till she comes down, I'll make you known to her, and
then we'll go upstairs. — That's her father.'

I had become aware of an alarming growling overhead, and had
probably expressed the fact in my countenance.

'I am afraid he is a sad old rascal,' said Herbert, smiling, 'but I
have never seen him. Don't you smell rum? He is always at it.'

'At rum?' said I.

'Yes,' returned Herbert, 'and you may suppose how mild it
makes his gout. He persists, too, in keeping all the provisions
upstairs in his room, and serving them out. He keeps them on
shelves over his head, and will weigh them all. His room must be
like a chandler's shop.'

While he thus spoke, the growling noise became a prolonged
roar, and then died away.

'What else can be the consequence,' said Herbert, in explanation,
'if he will cut the cheese? A man with the gout in his right hand
— and everywhere else — can't expect to get through a Double
Gloucester without hurting himself.'

He seemed to have hurt himself very much, for he gave another
furious roar.

'To have Provis for an upper lodger is quite a godsend to Mrs.
Whimple,' said Herbert, 'for of course people in general won't
stand that noise. A curious place, Handel; isn't it?'

It was a curious place, indeed; but remarkably well kept and
clean.

'Mrs. Whimple,' said Herbert, when I told him so, 'is the best
of housewives, and I really do not know what my Clara would do
without her motherly help. For Clara has no mother of her own,
Handel, and no relation in the world but old Gruffandgrim.'

'Surely that's not his name, Herbert?'

'No, no,' said Herbert, 'that's my name for him. His name is
Mr. Barley. But what a blessing it is for the son of my father and
mother, to love a girl who has no relations, and who can never
bother herself, or anybody else, about her family?'

Herbert had told me on former occasions, and now reminded

364 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

me, that he first knew Miss Clara Barley when she was completing
her education at an establishment at Hammersmith, and that on
her being recalled home to nurse her father, he and she had con-
fided .their affection to the motherly Mrs. Whimple, by whom it
had been fostered and regulated with equal kindness and discre-
tion ever since. It was understood that nothing of a tender nature
could possibly be confided to Old Barley, by reason of his being
totally unequal to the consideration of any subject more psychol-
ogical than Gout, Rum, and Purser's stores.

As we were thus conversing in a low tone while Old Barley's
sustained growl vibrated in the beam that crossed the ceiling, the
room door opened, and a very pretty, slight, dark -eyed girl of twen-
ty or so, came in wi^h a basket in her hand: whom Herbert tender-
ly relieved of the basket, and presented blushing, as 'Clara.' She
really was a most charming girl, and might have passed for a cap-
tive fairy, whom that truculent Ogre, Old Barley, had pressed into
his service.

'Look here,' said Herbert, showing me the basket, with a com-
passionate and tender smile after 'we had talked a little; 'here's
poor Clara's supper, served out every night. Here's her allowance
of bread, and here's her slice of cheese, and here's her rum — which
I drink. This is Mr. Barley's breakfast for tomorrow, served out
to be cooked. Two mutton chops, three potatoes, some split peas,
a little flour, two ounces of butter, a pinch of salt, and all this
black pepper. It's stewed up together, and taken hot, and it's a
nice thing for the gout, I should think!'

There was something so natural and winning in Clara's re-
signed way of looking at these stores in detail, as Herbert pointed
them out, — and something so confiding, loving and innocent, in
her modest manner of yielding herself to Herbert's embracing arm
— and something so gentle in her, so much needing protection on
Mill Pond Bank, by Chink's Basin, and the Old Green Copper
Rope-Walk, with Old Barley growling in the beam — that I would
not have undone the engagement between her and Herbert, for
all the money in the pocket-book I had never opened.

I was looking at her with pleasure and admiration, when sud-
denly the growl swelled into a roar again, and a frightful bump-

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 365

ing noise was heard above, as if a giant with a wooden leg were

,, trying to bore it through the ceihng to come at us. Upon this

Clara said to Herbert, 'Papa wants me, darling!' and ran away.

'There is an unconscionable old shark for you!' said Herbert.
What do you suppose he wants now, Handel?'

'I don't know,' said I. 'Something to drink?'

'That's it!' cried Herbert, as if I had made a guess of extra-
ordinary merit. 'He keeps his grog ready-mixed in a little tub on
the table. Wait a moment, and you'll hear Clara lift him up to
take some. — There he goes! ' Another roar, with a prolonged shake
at the end. 'Now,' said Herbert, as it was succeeded by silence.
*he's drinking. Now,' said Herbert, as the growl resounded in the
beam once more, 'he's down again on his back! '

Clara returned soon afterwards, and Herbert accompanied me
upstairs to see our charge. As we passed Mr. Barley's door, he
was heard hoarsely muttering within, in a strain that rose and fell
like wind, the following Refrain; in which I substitute good wishes
for something quite the reverse.

'Ahoy! Bless your eyes, here's old Bill Barley. Here's old Bill
Barley, bless your eyes. Here's old Bill Barley on the flat of his
back, by the LorJ. Lying on the flat of his back, like a drifting
old dead flounder, here's your old Bill Barley, bless your eyes.
Ahoy! Bless you.'

In this strain of consolation, Herbert informed me the invisible
Barley would commune with himself by the day and night to-
gether; often while it was Hght, having, at the same time, one eye
at a telescope which was fitted on his bed for the convenience of
sweeping the river.

In his two cabin rooms at the top of the house, which were fresh
and airy, and in which Mr. Barley was less audible than below, I
found Provis comfortably settled. He expressed no alarm, and
seemed to feel none that was worth mentioning; but it struck me
that he was softened — indefinably, for 1 could not have said how.
and could never afterwards recall how when I tried; but certainly.

The opportunity that the day's rest had given me for reflection
had resulted in my fully determining to say nothing to him respect-
ing Compeyson. For anything I knew, his animosity towards the

366 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

man might otherwise lead to his seeking him out and rushing on
his own destruction. Therefore, when Herbert and I sat down
with him by his fire, I asked him first of all whether he relied on
Wemmick's judgment and sources of information?

'Ay, ay, dear boy!' he answered, with a grave nod, 'J^gg^^s
knows.'

'Then, I have talked with Wemmick,' said I, 'and have come to
tell you what caution he gave me and what advice.'

This I did accurately, with the reservation just mentioned; and
I told him how Wemmick had heard, in Newgate prison (whether
from officers or prisoners I could not say), that he was under some
suspicion, and that my chambers had been watched; how Wem-
mick had recommended his keeping close for a time, and my keep-
ing away from him; and what Wemmick had said about getting
him abroad. I added, that of course, when the time came, I should
go with him, or should follow close upon him, as might be saftest
in Wemmick's judgment. What was to follow that, I did not
touch upon ; neither indeed was I at all clear or comfortable about
it in my own mind, now that I saw him in that softer condition,
and in declared peril for my sake. As to altering my way of living,
by enlarging my expenses, I put it to him whether in our present
unsettled and difficult circumstances, it would not be simply ri-
diculous, if it were no worse?

He could not deny this, and indeed was very reasonable through-
out. His coming back was a venture, he said, and he had always
known it to be a venture. He would do nothing to make it a des-
perate venture, and he had very little fear of his safety with such
good help.

Herbert, who had been looking at the fire and pondering, here
said that something had come into his thoughts arising out of
Wemmick's suggestion, which it might be worth while to pursue.
'We are both good watermen, Handel, and could take him down
the river ourselves when the right time comes. No boat would then
be hired for the purpose, and no boatmen; that would save at least
a chance of suspicion, and any chance is worth saving. Never
mind the season; don't you think it might be a good thing if you

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 367 ^

began at once to keep a boat at the Temple stairs, and were in
the habit of rowing up and down the river? You fall into that
habit, and then who notices or minds? Do it twenty or fifty times,
and there is nothing special in your doing it the twenty-first or
fifty-first.'

I liked this scheme, and Provis was quite elated by it. We
agreed that it should be carried into execution, and that Provis
should never recognise us if we came below Bridge and rowed past
Mill Pond Bank. But, we further agreed that he should pull down
the blind in that part of his window which gave upon the east,
whenever he saw us and all was right.

Our conference being now ended, and everything arranged, I
rose to go ; remarking to Herbert that he and I had better not go
home together, and that I would take half an hour's start of him,
'I don't like to leave you here,' I said to Provis, 'though I cannot
doubt your being safer here than near me. Good-bye! '

'Dear boy,' he answered, clasping my hands, 'I don't know
when we may meet again, and I don't like Good-bye. Say Good-
Night!'

'Good-night! Herbert will go regularly between us, and when
the time comes you may be certain I shall be ready. Good-night,
Good-night!'

We thought it best that he should stay in his own rooms, and
we left him on the landing outside his door, holding a light over
the stair-rail to light us downstairs. Looking back at him, I
thought of the first night of his return when our positions were re-
versed, and when I little supposed my heart could ever be as heavy
and anxious at parting from him as it was now.

Old Barley was growling and swearing when we repassed his
door, with no appearance of having ceased or of meaning to cease-
When we got to the foot of the stairs, I asked Herbert whether he
had preserved the name of Provis? He replied, certainly not, and
that the lodger was Mr. Campbell. He also explained that the
utmost known of Mr. Campbell there, was, that he (Herbert) had
Mr. Campbell consigned to him, and felt a strong personal interest
in his being well cared for, and living a secluded life. So, when we

368 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

went into the parlour where Mrs. Whimple and Clara were seated
at work, I said nothing of my own interest in Mr. Campbell, but
kept it to myself.

When I had taken leave of the pretty gentle dark-eyed girl
and of the motherly woman who had not outlived her honest sym-
pathy with a little affair of true love, I felt as if the Old Green
Copper Rope-Walk had grown quite a different place. Old Bar-
ley might be as old as the hills, and might swear like a whole
field of troopers, but there were redeeming youth and trust and
hope enough in Chink's Basin to fill it to overflowing. And then I
thought of Estella, and of our parting, and went home very sadly.

All things were as quiet in the Temple as ever I had seen them.
The windows of the rooms of that side, lately occupied by Provis,
were dark and still, and there was no lounger in Garden Court.
I walked past the fountain twice or thrice before I descended the
steps that were between me and my rooms, but I was quite alone.
Herbert coming to my bedside when he came in — for I went
straight to bed, dispirited and fatigued — made the same report.
Opening one of the windows after that, he looked out into the
moonlight, and told me that the pavement was as solemnly empty
as the pavement of any Cathedral at that same hour.

Next day, I set myself to get the boat. It was soon done, and
the boat was brought round to tb'^ Temple stairs, and lay where I
could reach her within a minute or two. Then, I began to go out
as for training and practice: sometimes alone, sometimes with
Herbert. I was often out in cold, rain, and sleet, but nobody took
much note of me after I had been out a few times. At first, I kept
above Blackfriars Bridge; but as the hours of the tide changed,
I took towards London Bridge. It was Old London Bridge in those
days, and at certain states of the tide there was a race and a fall
of water there which gave it a bad reputation. But I knew well
enough how to 'shoot' the bridge after seeing it done, and so be-
gan to row about among the shipping in the Pool, and down to
Erith. The first time I passed Mill Pond Bank, Herbert and I
were pulling a pair of oars; and, both in going and returning, we
saw the blinds towards the east come down. Herbert was rarely
there less frequently than three times in a week, and he never

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 369

brought me a single word of intelligence that was at all alarming^
Still, I knew that there was cause for alarm, and I could not get
rid of the notion of being watched. Once received, it is a haunt-
ing idea; how many undesigning persons I suspected of watching
me, it would be hard to calculate.

In short, I was always full of fears for the rash man who was in
hiding. Herbert had sometimes said to me that he found it pleas-
ant to stand at one of our windows after dark, when the tide was
running down, and to think that it was flowing, with everything
it bore, towards Clara. But I thought with dread that it was
flowing towards Magwitch, and that any black mark, on its sur-
face might be his pursuers, going swiftly, silently and surely, tx)
take him.

CHAPTER XLVII

Some weeks passed without bringing any change. We waited for
Wemmick, and he made no sign. If I had never known him out
of Little Britain, and had never enjoyed the privilege of being on
a familiar footing at the Castle, I might have doutbed him; not
so for a moment, knowing him as I did.

My worldly affairs began to wear a gloomy appearance, and I
was pressed for money by more than one creditor. Even I myself
began to know the want of money (I mean of ready money in my
own pocket), and to relieve it by converting some easily spared
articles of jewellery into cash. But I had quite determined that
it would be a heartless fraud to take more money from my patron
in the existing state of my uncertain thoughts and plans. There-
fore, I had sent him the unopened pocket-book by Herbert, to
hold in his own keeping, and I felt a kind of satisfaction — whether
it was a false kind or a true, I hardly know — in not having profited
by his generosity since his revelation of himself.

As the time wore on, an impression settled heavily upon me that
Estella was married. Fearful of having it confirmed, though it
was all but a conviction, I avoided the newspapers, and begged
Herbert (to whom I had confided the circumstances of our last in«

370 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

terview) never to speak of her to me. Why I hoarded up this last
wretched Httle rag of the robe of hope that was rent and given to
the winds, how do I know! Why did you who read this, commit
that not dissimilar inconsistency of your own, last year, last month,
last week?

It was an unhappy life that I lived, and its one dominant anxie-
ty, towering over all its other anxieties like a high mountain above
a range of mountains, never disappeared from my view. Still, no
new cause for fear arose. Let me start from my bed as I would,
with the terror fresh upon me that he was discovered; let me sit
listening as I would, with dread for Herbert's returning step at
night, lest it should be fleeter than ordinary, and winged with evil
news; for all that, and much more to like purpose, the round of
things went on. Condemned to inaction and a state of constant
restlessness and suspense, I rowed about in my boat, and waited,
waited, waited as I best could.

There were states of the tide when, having been down the river,
I could not get back through the eddy-chafed arches and starlings
of Old London Bridge; then, I left my boat at a wharf near the
Custom House, to be brought up afterwards to the Temple stairs.
I was not averse to doing this, as it served to make me and my
boat a commoner incident among the waterside people there. From
this slight occasion, sprang two meetings that I have now to tell
of.

One afternoon, late in the month of February, I came ashore at
the wharf at dusk. I had pulled down as far as Greenwich with the
ebb tide, and had turned with the tide. It had been a fine bright
day, but had become foggy as the sun dropped, and I had had to
feel my way back among the shipping pretty carefully. Both in go-
ing and returning, I had seen the signal in his window. All well.

As it was a raw evening and I was cold, I thought I would com-
fort myself with dinner at once; and as I had hours of dejection
and solitude before me if I went home to the Temple, I thought I
would afterwards go to the play. The theatre where Mr. Wopsle
had achieved his questionable triumph, was in that waterside
neighbourhood (it is nowhere now), and to that theatre I resolved
to go I was aware that Mr. Wopsle had not succeeded in reviving

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 371

the Drama, but, on the contrary, had rather partaken of its de-
cHne. He had been ominously heard of, through the playbills, as
a faithful Black, in connection with a little girl of noble birth, and
a monkey. And Herbert had seen him as a predatory Tartar, of
comic propensities, with a face like a red brick and an outrageous
hat all over bells.

I dined at what Herbert and I used to call a Geographical chop-
house — where there were maps of the world in porterpot rims or
every half-yard of the tablecloths, and charts of gravy on every
one of the knives — to this day there is scarcely a single chop-house
within the Lord Mayor's dominions which is not Geographical — •
and wore out the time in dozing over crumbs^ staring at gas, and
baking in a hot blast of dinners. By and by, I roused myself and
went to the play.

There, I found a virtuous boatswain in his Majesty's service — a
most excellent man, though I could have wished his trousers not
quite so tight in some places and not quite so loose in others —
who knocked all the little men's hats over their eyes, though he
was very generous and brave, and who wouldn't hear of anybody's
paying taxes, though he was very patriotic. He had a bag of
money in his pocket, like a pudding in the cloth, and on that
property married a young person in bed-furniture, with great re-
joicings; the whole population of Portsmouth (nine in number
at the last Census) turning out on the beach, to rub their own
hands and shake everybody else's, and sing. Till, fill!' A certain
dark-complexioned Swab, however, who wouldn't fill, or do any-
thing else that was proposed to him, and whose heart was openly
stated (by the boatswain) to be as black as his figurehead, pro-
posed to two other Swabs to get all mankind into difficulties ; whick
was so effectually done (the Swab family having considerable pol-
itical influence) that it took half the evening to set things right^
and then it was only brought about through an honest little grocer
with a white hat, black gaiters, and red nose, getting in to a clock,
with a gridiron, and listening, and coming out, and knocking every-
body down from behind with the gridiron whom he couldn't con-
fute with what he had overheard. This led to Mr. Wopsle's (who
had never been heard of before) coming in with a star and garter

372 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

©n, as a plenipotentiary of great power direct from the Admiralty,
to say that the Swabs were all to go to prison on the spot, and
that he had brought the boatswain down the Union Jack, as a
sMght acknowledgment of his public services. The boatswain, un-
manned for the first time, respectfully dried his eyes on the Jack,
and then cheering up and addressing Mr. Wopsle as Your Honour,
solicited permission to take him by the fin. Mr. Wopsle conced-
ing his fin with a gracious dignity, was immediatley shoved into a
dusty corner while everybody danced a hornpipe; and from that
corner, surveying the public with a discontented eye, became
aware of me.

The second piece was the last new grand comic Christmas ^an*
tomime, in the first scene of which, it pained me to suspect that I
detected Mr. Wopsle with red worsted legs under a highly magni-
fied phosphoric countenance and a shock of red curtain-fringe
for his hair, engaged in the manufacture of thunderbolts in a mine,
and displaying great cowardice when his gigantic master came
home (very hoarse) to dinner. But he presently presented himself
under worthier circumstances; for, the Genius of Youthful Love
being in want of assistance — on acount of the parental brutality of
an ignorant farmer who opposed the choice of his daughter's heart,
by purposely falling upon the object in a flour sack, out of the
first-floor window — summoned a sententious Enchanter; and he,
coming up from the antipodes rather unsteadily, after an apparent-
ly violent journey, proved to be Mr. Wopsle in a high-crowned hat,
with a necromantic work in one volume under his arm. The busi-
ness of this enchanter on earth, being principafly to be talked at,
sung at, butted at, danced at, and flashed at with fires of various
colours, he had a good deal of time on his hands. And I observed
with great surprise, that he devoted it to staring in my direction
as if he were lost in amazement.

There was something so remarkable in the increasing glare of
Mr. Wopsle's eye, and he seemed to be turning so many things
fiver in his mind and to grow so confused, that I could not make it
€ut. I sat thinking of it, long after he had ascended to the clouds
In a large watch-case, and still I could not make it out. I was still

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 373

thinking of it when I came out of the theatre an hour afterwards,
and found him waiting for me near the door.

'How do you do?' said I, shaking hands with him as we turned
down the street together. 'I saw that you saw me.'

'Saw you, Mr. Pip!' he returned. 'Yes, of course I saw you.
But who else was there?'

'What else?'

'It is the strangest thi^g,' said Mr. Wopsle, drifting into his lost
look again; 'and yet I could swear to him.'

Becoming alarmed, I entreated Mr. Wopsle to explain his mean-
ing.

'Whether I should have noticed him at first but for your being
there,' said Mr. Wopsle, going on in the same lost way, 'I can't be
positive; yet I think I should.'

Involuntarily, I looked around me, as I was accustomed to look
round me when I went home; for, these mysterious words gave me
a chill.

'Oh! He can't be in sight' said Mr. Wopsle. 'He went out, be-
fore I went off; I saw him go.'

Having the reason that I had for being suspicious, I even sus-
pected this poor actor. I mistrusted a design to entrap me into
some admission. Therefore, I glanced at him as we walked on to-
gether, but said nothing.

'I had a ridiculous fancy that he must be with you, Mr. Pip,
till I saw that you were quite unconscious of him, sitting behind
you there like a ghost.'

My former chill crept over me again, but I was resolved not
to speak yet, for it was quite consistent with his words that he
might be set on to induce me to connect these references with
Provis. Of course, I was perfectly sure and safe that Provis had
not been there.

'I dare say you wonder at me, Mr. Pip; indeed, I^ see you do.
But it is so very strange! You'll hardly believe what I am going
to tell you. I could hardly believe it myself, if you told me/

'Indeed?' said I.

*No, indeed. Mr. Pip, you remember in old times a certain

374 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

Christmas Day, when you were quite a child, and I dined at Gar-
gery's, and some soldiers came to the door to get a pair of hand-
cuffs mended?'

'I remember it very well.'

'And you remember that there was a chase after two convicts,
and that we joined in it, and that Gargery took you on his back,
and that I took the lead and you kept up with me as well as you
could?'

'I remember it all very well.' Better than he thought — except
the last clause.

And you remember that we came up with the two in a ditch,
and that there was a scuffle between them, and that one of them
had been severely handled and much mauled about the face, by
the other?'

'I see it all before me.'

'And that the soldiers lighted torches, and put the two in the
centre, and that we went on to see the last of tnem, over the black
marshes, with the torchlight shining on their faces — I am particular
about that; with the torchlight shining on their faces, when tnere
was an outer ring of dark night all about us?'

'Yes,' said I. 'I remember all that.'

Then, Mr. Pip, one of those two prisoners sat behind you to-
night. I saw him over your shoulder.'

'Steady! ' I thought. I asked him then, 'Which of the two do you
suppose you saw?'

'The one who had been mauled,' he answered readily, 'and I'll
swear I saw him! The more I think of him, the more certain I
am of him.'

'This is very curious!' said I, with the best assumption I could
put on, of its being nothing more to me. 'Very curious indeed! '

I cannot exaggerate the enhanced disquiet into which this con-
versation threw me, or the special and peculiar terror I felt at
Compeyson's having been behind me 'like a ghost.' For, if he had
ever been out of my thoughts for a few moments together since
the hiding had begun, it was in those very moments when he was
closest to me ; and to think that I should be so unconscious and off
my guard after all my care, was as if I had shut an avenue of a

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 375

hundred doors to keep him out, and then had found him at my el-
bow. I could not doubt either that he was there, because I was
there, and that however slight an appearance of danger there might
be about us, danger was always near and active.

I put such questions to Mr. Wopsle as. When did the man come
in? He could not tell me that; he saw me, and over my shoulder
he saw the man. It was not until he had seen him for some time
that he began to identify him; but he had from the first vaguely
associated him with me, and known him as somehow belonging
to me in the old village time. How was he dressed? Prosperously,
but not noticeably otherwise; he thought, in black. Was his face
at all disfigured? No, he believed not. I believed not, too, for al-
though in my brooding state I had taken no especial notice of the
people behind me, I thought it likely that a face at all disfigured
would have attracted my attention.

When Mr. Wopsle had imparted to me all that he could recall
or I extract, and when I had treated him to a little appropriate
refreshment after the fatigues of the evening, we parted. It was
between twelve and one o'clock when I reached the Temple, and
the gates were shut. No one was near me when I went in and went
home.

Herbert had come in, and we held a very serious council by the
fire. But there was nothing to be done, saving to communicate
to Wemmick what I had that night found out, and to remind him
that we waited for his hint. As I thought that I might compro-
mise him if I went too often to the Castle, I made this communica-
tion by letter. I wrote it before I went to bed and went out and
posted it; and again no one was near me. Herbert and I agreed
that we could do nothing else but be very cautious. And we were
very cautious indeed — more cautious than before, if that were pos-
sible— and I for my part never went near Chink's Basin, except
when I rowed by, and then I only looked at Mill Pond Bank as I
looked at anything else.

376 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

CHAPTER XLVIII

The second of the two meetings referred to in the last chapter
occurred about a week after the first. I had again left my boat
at the wharf below Bridge; the time was an hour earlier in the
afternoon; and, undecided where to dine, I had strolled up into
Cheapside, and was strolling along it, surely the most unsettled
person in all the busy concourse, when a large hand was laid upon
my shoulder, by some one overtaking me. It was Mr. Jaggers's
band, and he passed it through my arm.

'As we are going in the same direction, Pip, we may walk to-
gether. Where are you bound for?'

'For the Temple, I think,' said I.

'Don't you know?' said Mr. Jaggers.

'Well,' I returned, glad for once to get the better of him in
cross-examination, 'I do not know, for I have not made up my
mind.'

'You are going to dine?' said Mr. Jaggers. 'You don't mind
admitting that, I suppose?'

'No,' I returned, 'I don't mind admitting that.'

'And are not engaged?'

'I don't mind admitting also, that I am not engaged.'

'Then,' said Mr. Jaggers, 'come and dine with me.'

T was going to excuse myself, when he added, 'Wemmick's com-
ing.' So I changed my excuse into an acceptance — the few words
I had uttered serving for the beginning of either — and we went
along Cheapside and slanted off to Little Britain, while the lights
were springing up brilliantly in the shop windows, and the street
lamplighters, scarcely finding ground enough to plant their lad-
ders on in the midst of the afternoon's bustle, were skipping up
and down and running in and out, opening more red eyes in the
gathering fog than m}^ rushlight tower at the Hummums had
opened white eyes in the ghostly wall.

At the office in Little Britain there was the usual letter-writing,
hand-washing, candle-snuffing, and safe-locking, that closed the
business of the day. As I stood idle by Mr. Jaggers's fire, its ris-

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 377

ing and falling flame made the two casts on the shelf look as if
they were playing a diabolical game at bo-peep with me ; while the
pair of coarse fat office candles that dimly lighted Mr. Jaggers
as he wrote in a corner, were decorated with dirty winding-sheets,
as if in remembrance of a host of hanged clients.

We went to Gerrard Street, all three together, in a hackney-
coach: and as soon as we got there, dinner was served. Although
I should not have thought of making, in that place, the most dis-
tant reference by so much as a look to Wemmick's Walworth senti-
ments, yet I should have had no objection to catching his eye now
and then in a friendly way. But it was not to be done. He turned
his eyes on Mr. Jaggers whenever he raised them from the table,
and was as dry and distant to me as if there were twin Wemmicks
and this was the wrong one.

'Did you send that note of Miss Havisham's to J\Ir. Pip, Wem-
mick?' Mr. Jaggers asked, soon after we began dinner.

'No, sir,' returned Wemmick; 'it was going by post, when you
brought Mr. Pip into the office. Here it is.' He handed it to his
principal, instead of to me.

'It's a note of two lines, Pip,' said Mr. Jaggers, handing it on,
'sent up to me by Miss Havisham, on account of her not being surt
of your address. She tells me that she wants to see you on a little
matter of business you mentioned to her. You'll go down?'

'Yes,' said I, casting my eyes over the note, which was exactly in
those terms.

'When do you think of going down?'

'I have an impending engagement,' said I, glancing at Wem-
mick, who was putting fish into the post-office, 'that renders me
rather uncertain of my time. At once, I think.'

'If Mr. Pip has the intention of going at once,' said Wemmick
to Mr. Jaggers, 'he needn't write an answer, you know.'

Receiving this as an intimation that it was best not to delay, 1
settled that I would go to-morrow, and said so. Wemmick drank
a glass of wine and looked with a grimly satisfied air at Mr. Jag'
gers, but not at me.

'So, Pip! Our friend the Spider,' said Mr. Jaggers, 'has played
his cards. He has won the pool/

378 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

It was as much as I could do to assent.

'Hah! He is a promising fellow — in his way — but he may not
have it all his own way. The stronger will win in the end, but the
stronger has to be found out first. If he should turn to, and beat
her '

'Surely,' I interrupted, with a burning face and heart, 'you do
not seriously think that he is scoundrel enough for that, Mr.
Jaggers?'

'I didn't say so, Pip. I am putting a case. If he should turn to
and beat her, he may possibly get the strength on his side ; if it
should be a question of intellect, he certainly will not. It would be
chance work to give an opinion how a fellow of that sort will turn
out in such circumstances, because it's a toss-up between two
results.'

'May I ask what they are?'

'A fellow like our friend the Spider,' answered Mr. Jaggers,
'either beats, or cringes. He may cringe and growl, or cringe and
not growl; but he either beats or cringes. Ask Wemmick his
opinion.'

'Either beats or cringes,' said Wemmick, not at all addressing
himself to me.

'So, here's to Mrs. Bentley Drummle,' said Mr. Jaggers, taking
a decanter of choice wine from his dumb-waiter, and filling for
each of us and himself, 'and may the question of supremacy be set-
tled to the lady's satisfaction! To the satisfaction of the lady and
the gentleman, it never will be. Now, Molly, Molly, Molly, Molly,
how slow you are today! '

She was at his elbow when he addressed her, putting a dish upon
the table. As she withdrew her hands from it, she fell back a step
or two, nervously muttering some excuse. And a certain action of
her fingers as she spoke arrested my attention.

'What's the matter?' said Mr. Jaggers.

'Nothing. Only the subject we were speaking of,' said I, Vas
rather painful to me '

The action of her fingers was like the action of knitting. She
stood looking at her master, not understanding whether she was
free to go, or whether he had more to say to her and would call her

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 379

hack if she did go. Her look was very intent. Surely, I had seen
exactly such eyes and such hands, on a memorable occasion very
lately!

He dismissed her, and she glided out of the room. But she re-
mained before me, as plainly as if she were still there. I looked at
those hands, I looked at those eyes, I looked at that flowing hair ;
and I compared them with other hands, other eyes, other hair, that
I knew of, and with what those might be after twenty years of a
brutal husband and a stormy life. I looked again at those hands
and eyes of the housekeeper, and thought of the inexplicable feel-
ing that had come over me when I last walked — not alone — in the
ruined garden, and through the deserted brewery. I thought how
the same feeling had come back when I saw a face looking at me,
and a hand waving to me from a stage-coach window ; and how it
had come back again and had flashed about me like Lightning,
when I passed in a carriage — not alone — through a sudden glare
of light in a dark street. I thought how one link of association had
helped that identification in the theatre, and how such a link,
wanting before, had been riveted for me now, when I had passed
by a chance swift from Estella's name to the fingers with their
knitting action, and the attentive eyes. And I felt absolutely cer-
tain that this woman was Estella's mother.

Mr. Jaggers had seen me with Estella, and was not likely to have
missed the sentiments I had been at no pains to conceal. He
nodded when I said the subject was painful to me, clapped me on
the back, put round the wine again, and went on with his dinner.

Only twice more did the housekeeper reappear, and then her
stay in the room was very short, and Mr. Jaggers was sharp with
her. But her hands were Estella's hands, and her eyes were
Estella's eyes, and if she had reappeared a hundred times I could
have been neither more sure nor less sure that my conviction was
the truth.

It was a dull evening, for Wemmick drew his wine when it came
round, quite as a matter of business — just as he might have drawn
his salary when that came round — and with his eyes on his chief,
sat in a state of perpetual readiness for cross-examination. As to
the quantity of wine, his post-office was as indifferent and ready as

380 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

any other post-office for its quantity of letters. From my point of
view, he was the wrong twin all the time, and only externally like
the Wemmick of Walworth.

We took our leave early, and left together. Even when we were
groping among Mr. Jaggers's stock of boots for our hats, I felt that
the right twin was on his way back; and we had not gone half a
dozen yards down Gerrard Street in the Walworth direction before
I found that I was walking arm-in-arm with the right twin, and
that the wrong twin had evaporated into the evening air.

'Well!^ said Wemmick, 'that's over! He's a wonderful man,
without his living likeness; but I feel that I have to screw myself
up when I dine with him — and I dine more comfortably un-
screwed.

I felt that this was a good statement of the case, and told him so,

'Wouldn't say it to anybody but yourself,' he answered. *I know
that what is said between you and me, goes no further.'

I asked him if he had ever seen Miss Havisham's adopted
daughter, Mrs. Bentley Drummle? He said no. To avoid being
too abrupt I then spoke of the Aged, and of Miss Skiffins. He
looked rather sly when I mentioned Miss Skiffins, and stopped in
the street to blow his nose, with a roll of the head and a flourish
not quite free from latent boastfulness.

'Wemmick,' said I, 'do you remember telling me, before I first
went to Mr. Jaggers's private house, to notice that housekeeper?'

'Did I?' he replied. 'Ah, I dare say I did. Deuce take me,' he
added sullenly, 'I know I did. I find I am not quite unscrewed
yet.'

*A wild beast tamed, you called her?'

'And what did you call her?'

^The same. How did Mr. Jaggers tame her, Wemmick?'

'That's his secret. She has been with him many a long year.'

'I wish you would tell me her story. I feel a particular interest
in being acquainted with it. You know that what is said between
you and me goes no further.'

'Well!' Wemmick replied, 'I don't know her story — that is, J
don't know all of it. But what I do know, I'll tell you. We are in
our private and personal capacities, of course.'

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 381

'Of course.'

'A score or so of years ago, that woman was tried at the Old
Bailey for murder and was acquitted. She was a very handsome
young woman, and I believe had some gipsy blood in her. Any-
how, it was hot enough when it was up, as you may suppose.'

'But she was acquitted.'

'Mr. Jaggers was for her,' pursued Wemmick, with a look full of
meaning, 'and worked the case in a way quite astonishing. It was
a desperate case, and it was comparatively early days with him
then, and he worked it to general admiration; in fact, it may al-
most be said to have made him. He worked it himself at the police-
office, day after day for many days, contending against even a
committal; and at the trial where he couldn't work it himself, sat
under counsel, and — every one knew — put in all the salt and pep-
per. The murdered person was a woman; a woman, a good ten
years older, very much larger, and very much stronger. It was a
case of jealousy. They both led tramping lives, and this woman in
Gerrard Street here, had been married very young, over the broom-
stick (as we say), to a tramping man and was a perfect fury in
point of jealouf}-. The murdered woman — more a match for the
man, certainly, in point of years — was found dead in a barn near
Hounslow Heath. There had been a violent struggle, perhaps a
fight. She was bruised and scratched and torn, and had been held
by the throat at last and choked. Now, there was no reasonable
evidence to implicate any person but this woman, and, on the im-
probabilities of her having been able to do it, Mr. Jaggers princi-
pally rested his case. You may be sure,' said Wemmick, touching
me on the sleeve, 'that he never dwelt upon the strength of her
hands then, though he sometimes does now.'

I had told Wemmick of his showing us her wrists, that day of
the dinner party.

'Well, sir!' Wemmick went on; 'it happened — happened, don't
you see? — that this woman was so very artfully dressed from the
time of her apprehension, that she looked much slighter than she
really was; in particular, her sleeves are always remembered to
have been so skilfully contrived that her arms had quiie a delicate
look. She had only a bruise or two about her — nothing for a tramp

382 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

• — but the backs of her hands were lacerated, and the question was,
was it with finger-nails? Now, Mr. Jaggers showed that she had
struggled through a great lot of brambles which were not as high
as her face ; but which she could not have got through and kept her
hands out of; and bits of those brambles were actually found in
her skin and put in evidence, as well as the fact that the brambles
in question were found on examination to have been broken
through, and to have little shreds of her dress and little spots of
blood upon them here and there. But the boldest point he made,
was this. It was attempted to be set up in proof of her jealousy,
that she was under strong suspicion of having, at about the time
of the murder, frantically destroyed her child by this man — some
three years old — to revenge herself upon him. Mr. Jaggers worked
that, in this way. *We say these are not marks of finger-nails, but
marks of brambles, and we show you the brambles. You say they
are marks of fingernails, and you set up the hypothesis that she
destroyed her child. You must accept all consequences of that
hypothesis. For anything we know, she may have destroyed her
child, and the child in clinging to her may have scratched her
hands. What then? You are not trying her for the murder of her
child; why don't 3^ou? As to this case, if you will have scratches,
we say that, for anything we know, you may have accounted for
them, assuming for the sake of argument that you have not in-
vented them?" To sum up, sir,' said Wemmick, 'Mr. Jaggers was
altogether too many for the Jury, and they gave in.'

'Has she been in his service ever since?'

'Yes; but not only that,' said Wemmick, 'she went into his ser-
vice immediately after her acquittal, tamed as she is now. She has
since been taught one thing and another in the way of her duties,
but she was tamed from the beginning.'

'Do you remember the sex of the child?'

'Said to have been a girl.'

'You have nothing more to say to me to-night?'

'Nothing. I got your letter and destroyed it. Nothing.'

We exchanged a cordial Good-Night, and I went home, with
new matter for my thoughts, though with no relief from the old.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 383

CHAPTER XLIX

Putting Miss Havisham's note in my pocket, that it might serve
as my credentials for so soon reappearing at Satis House, in case
her waywardness should lead her to express any surprise at seeing
me, I went down again by the coach next day. But, I alighted at
the Halfway House, and breakfasted there, and walked the rest of
the distance; for, I sought to get into the town quietly by the un-
frequented ways, and to leave it in the same manner.

The best light of the day was gone when I passed along the quiet
echoing courts behind the High Street. The nooks of ruin where
the old monks had once had their refectories and gardens, and
where the strong walls were now passed into the service of humble
sheds and stables, were almost as silent as the old monks in their
graves. The cathedral chimes had at once a sadder, and more re-
mote sound to me, as I hurried on avoiding observation, than they
had ever had before; so, the swell of the old organ was borne to
my ears like funeral music; and the rooks, as they hovered about
the grey tower and swung in the bare high trees of the priory-
garden, seemed to call to me that the place was changed, and that
Estella was gone out of it for ever.

An elderly woman whom I had seen before as one of the ser-
vants who lived in the supplementary house across the back court-
yard, opened the gate. The 'ighted candle stood in the dark pas-
sage within, as of old, and I took it up and ascended the staircase
alone. Miss Havisham was not in her own room, but was in the
larger room across the landing. Looking in at the door, after
knocking in vain, I saw her sitting on the hearth in a ragged chair,
close before; and lost in the contemplation of, the ashy fire.

Doing as I had often done, I went in, and stood, touching the
old chimney-piece, where she could see me when she raised her
eyes. There was an air of utter loneliness upon her, that would
have moved me to pity though she had wilfully done me a deeper
injury than I could charge her with. As I stood compassioi:ating
her, and thinking how in the progress of time I too had come to be

384 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

a part of the wrecked fortunes of that house, her eyes rested on
me. She stared, and said in a low voice, 'Is it real?'

'It is I, Pip. Mr. Jaggers gave me your note yesterday, and I
have lost no time.'

'Thank you. Thank you.'

As I brought another of the ragged chairs to the hearth and sat
down, I remarked a new expression on her face, as if she were
afraid of me.

'I want,' she said, 'to pursue that subject you mentioned to me
when you were last here, and to show you that I am not all stone.
But perhaps you can never believe, now, that there is anything
human in my heart?'

When I said some reassuring words, she stretched out her trem-
ulous right hand, as though she was going to touch me; but she
recalled it again before I understood the action, or knew how to
receive it.

'You said, speaking for your friend, that you could tell me how
to do something useful and good. Something that you would like
done, is it not?'

'Something that I would like done very very much.'

'What is it?'

I began explaining to her that secret history of the partnership.
I had not got far into it, when I judged from her looks that she
was thinking in a discursive way of me, rather than of what I said.
It seemed to be so, for, when I stopped speaking, many moments
passed before she showed that she was conscious of the fact.

'Do you break off,' she asked then, with her former air of being
afraid of me, 'because you hate me too much to bear to speak to
me?'

'No, no,' I answered, 'how can you think so. Miss Havisham!
I stopped because I thought you were not following what I said.'

'Perhaps I was not,' she answered, putting a hand to her head.
^ Begin again, and let me look at something else. Stay! Now tell
me.'

She set her hand upon her stick, in the resolute way that some-
times was habitual to her, and looked at the fire with a strong ex-
pression of forcing herself to attend. I went on with my explana-

i

GREAT EXPECTATIONS S85

tion, and told her how I had hoped to complete the transaction out
of my means, but how in this I was disappointed. That part of the
subject (I reminded her) involved matters which couid form no
part of my explanation, for they were the weighty secrets of
another.

^So!' said she, assenting with her head, but not looking at me.
*And how much money is wanting to complete the purchase?'

I was rather afraid of stating it, for it sounded a large sum.
'Nine hundred pounds.'

'If I give you the money for this purpose, will you keep my
secret as you have kept your own?'

'Quite as faithfully.'

'And your mind will be more at rest?*

'Much more at rest.'

'Are you very unhappy now?'

She asked this question, still without looking at me, but in an
unwonted tone of sympathy. I could not reply at the moment, for
my voice failed m.e. She put her left arm across the head of her
stick, and softly laid her forehead on it.

'I am far from happy, Miss Havisham; but I have other causes
of disquiet than any you know of. They are the secrets I have
mentioned.'

After a little while, she raised her head, and looked at the fire
again.

' 'Tis noble in you to tell me that you have other causes ol un-
happiness. Is it true?'

'Too true.'

'Can I only serve you, Pip, by serving your friend? Regarding
that as done, is there nothing I can do for you yourself?'

'Nothing. I thank you for the question. I thank you even more
for the tone of the question. But, there is nothing.'

She presently rose from her seat, and looked about the blighted
^^om for the means of writing. There were none there, and she
look from her pocket a yellow set of ivory tablets, mounted in tar-
nished gold, and wrote upon them with a pencil in a case of tar-
nished gold that hung from her neck.

'You are still on friendly terms with Mr. Jaggers?'

386 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

'Quite. 1 dined with him yesterday.'

'This is an authority to him to pay you that money, to lay out
at your irresponsible discretion for your friend. I keep no money
here; but if you would rather Mr. Jaggers knew nothing of the
matter, I will send it to you.'

'Thank you, Miss Havisham; I have not the least objection to
receiving it from him.'

She read me what she had written, and it was direct and clear,
and evidently intended to absolve me from any suspicion of profit-
ing by the receipt of the money. I took the tablets from her hand,
and it trembled again, and it trembled more as she took off the
chain to which the pencil was attached, and put it in mine. All this
she did, without looking at me.

'My name is on the first leaf. If you can ever write under my
name, "I forgive her," though ever so long after my broken heart
is dust — pray do it ! '

'O Miss Havisham,' said I, 'I can do it now. There have been
sore mistakes ; and my life has been a blind and thankless one ; and
I want forgiveness and direction far too much, to be bitter with
you.'

She turned her face to me for the first time since she had averted
it, and to my amazement, I may even add to my terror, dropped
on her knees at my feet ; with her folded hands raised to me in the
manner in which, when her poor heart was young and fresh and
whole, they must often have been raised to Heaven from her moth-
er's side.

To see her with her white hair and her worn face, kneeling at my
feet, gave me a shock through all my frame. I entreated her to
rise, and got my arms about her to help her up; but she only
pressed that hand of mine which was nearest to her grasp, and
hung her head over it and wept. I had never seen her shed a tear
before, and in the hope that the relief might do her good, I bent
over her without speaking She was not kneeling now, but was
down upon the ground.

'O!' she cried despairingly. 'What have I done! What have I
done!'

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 387

'If you mean, Miss Havisham, what have you done to injure me,
let me answer. Very little. I should have loved her under any cir-
cumstances.— Is she married?'

'Yes!'

It was a needless question, for a new desolation in the desolate
house had told me so.

'What have I done! What have I done ! ' She wrung her hands,
and crushed her white hair, and returned to this cry over and over
again. 'What have I done!'

I knew not how to answer, or how to comfort her. That she had
done a grievous thing in taking an impressionable child to mould
into the form that her wild resentment, spurned affection, and
wounded pride, found vengeance in, I knew full well. But that, in
shutting out the light of day, she had shut out infinitely more;
that, in seclusion, she had secluded herself from a thousand nat-
ural and healing influences; that, her mind, brooding solitary, had
grown diseased, as all minds do and must and will that reverse the
appointed order of their Maker; I knew equally well. And could I
look upon her without compassion, seeing her punishment in the
ruin she was, in her profound unfitness for this earth on which she
was placed, in the vanity of sorrow which had become a master
mania, like the vanity of penitence, the vanity of remorse, the van-
ity of unworthiness, and other monstrous vanities that have been
curses in this world?

'Until you spoke to her the other day, and until I saw in you a
looking-glass that showed me what I once felt myself, I did not
know what I had done. What have I done! What have I done!'
And so again, twenty, fifty times over. What had she done!

'Miss Havisham,' I said, when her cry had died away, 'you may
dismiss me from your mind and conscience. But Estella is a dif-
ferent case, and if you can ever undo any scrap of what you have
done amiss in keeping a part of her right nature away from her,
it will be better to do that, than to bemoan the past through a
hundred years.'

'Yes, yes, I know it. But, Pip — my Dear!' There was an earn-
est womanly compassion for me in her new affection. 'My dear!

388 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

Believe this: when she first came to me, I meant to save her from
misery like my own. At first I meant no more.'

'Well, well! ' said I. 'I hope so.'

'But as she grew, and promised to be very beautiful, I gradually
did worse, and with my praises, and with my jewels, and with
my teachings, and with this figure of myself always before her, a
warning to back and point my lessons, I stole her heart away and
put ice in its place.'

'Better,' I could not help saying, 'to have left her a natural
heart, even to be bruised or broken.'

With that. Miss Havisham looked distractedly at me for a while,
and then burst out again. What had she done!

'If you knew all my story,' she pleaded, 'you would have some
compassion for me and a better understanding of me.'

'Miss Havisham,' I answered, as delicately as I could, 'I believe
I may say that I do know your story, and have known it ever since
I first left this neighbourhood. It has inspired me with great com-
miseration, and I hope I understand it and its influences. Does
what has passed between us give me any excuse for asking you a
question relative to Estella? Not as she is, but as she was when
she first came here?'

She was seated on the ground, with her arms on the ragged chair,
and her head leaning on them. She looked full at me when I said
this, and replied, 'Go on.'

'Whose child was Estella?'

She shook her head.

'You don't know?'

She shook her head again.

'But Mr. Jaggers brought her here, or sent her here?'

'Brought her here.'

'Will you tell me how that came about?'

She answered in a low whisper and with caution: 'I had been shut
up in these rooms a long time (I don't know how long; you know
what time the clocks keep here), when I told him that I wanted
a little girl to rear and love, and save from my fate. I had first
seen him when I sent for him to lay this place waste for me; hav-
ing read of him in the newspapers before I and the world parted.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 389

He told me that he would look about him for such an orphan child.
One night he brought her here asleep, and I called her Estella.'

'Might I ask her age then?'

'Two or three. She herself knows nothing, but that she was left
an orphan and I adopted her.'

So convinced! was of that woman's being her mother, that I
wanted no evidence to establish the fact in my mind. But, to any
mind, I thought, the connection here was clear and straight.

What more could I hope to do by prolonging the interview? I
had succeeded on behalf of Herbert, Miss Havisham had told me
all she knew of Estella, I had said and done what I couid to ease
her mind. No matter with what other words we parted; we parted.

Twilight was closing in when I went downstairs into the natural
air. I called to the woman who had opened the g?te when I en-
tered, that I would not trouble her just yet, but wculd walk round
the place before leaving. For, I had a presentiment that I should
never be there again, and I felt that the dying light was suited to
my last view of it.

By the wilderness of casks that I had walked on long ago, and
on which the rain of years had fallen since, rotting them in m.any
places, and leaving miniature swamps and pools of water upon
those that stood on end, I made my way to the ruined garden. T
went all round it; round by the corner where Herbert and I had
fought our battle; round by the paths where Estella and I had
walked. So cold, so lonely, so dreary all!

Taking the brewery on my way back, I raised the rusty latch oi
a little door at the garden end of it, and walked through. I was
going out at the opposite door — not easy to open now, for the
damp wood had started and swelled, and the hinges were yielding,
and the threshold was encumbered with a growth of fungus — when
I turned my head to look back. A childish association revived with
wonderful force in the moment of the slight action, and I fancied
that I saw Miss Havisham hanging to the beam. So strong was
the impression, that I stood under the beam shuddering from head
to foot before I knew it was a fancy — though to be sure I was
there in an instant.

The mournfulness of the place and time, and the great terror oi

390 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

this illusion, though it was but momentary, caused me to feel an
indescribable awe as I came out between the open wooden gates
where I had once wrung my hair after Estella had wrung my heart.
Passing on into the front court-yard, I hesitated whether to call the
woman to let me out at the locked gate, of which she had lost the
key, or first to go upstairs and assure myself that Miss Havisham
was as safe and well as I had left her. I took the the latter course
and went up.

I looked into the room where I had left her, and I saw her seated
in the ragged chair upon the hearth close to the fire, with her back
toward me. In the moment when I was withdrawing my head to go
quietly away, I saw a great flaming light spring up. In the same
moment I saw her running at me shrieking, with a whirl of fire
blazing all about her, and soaring at least as many feet above her
head as she was high.

I had a double-caped great-coat on, and over my arm another
thick coat. That I got them off, closed with her, threw her down,
and got them over her; that I dragged the great cloth from the
table for the same purpose, and with it dragged down the heap of
rottenness in the midst, and all the ugly things that sheltered
there; that we were on the ground struggling like desperate ene-
mies, and that the closer I covered her, the more wildly she shrieked
and tried to free herself; that this occurred I knew through the
result, but not through anything I felt, or thought, or knew I did.
I knew nothing until I knew that we were on the floor by the great
table, and that patches of tinder yet alight were floating in the
smoky air, which a moment ago had been her faded bridal dress.

Then, I looked round and saw the disturbed beetles and spiders
running away over the floor, and the servants coming in with
breathless cries at the door. I still held her forcibly down with all
my strength, like a prisoner who might escape; and I doubt if I
even knew who she was, or why we had struggled, or that she had
been in flames, or that the flames were out, until I saw the patches
of tinder that had been her garments, no longer alight, but falling
in a black shower around us.

She was insensible, and I was afraid to have her moved, or even
touched. Assistance was sent for, and I held her until it came, as

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 391

if I unreasonably fancied (I think I did) that if I let her go, the
fire would break out again and consume her. When I got up, on
the surgeon's coming to her with other aid, I was astonished to see
that both my hands were burnt; for, I had no knowledge of it
through the sense of feeling.

On examination it was pronounced that she had received serious
hurts, but that they of themselves were far from hopeless; the
danger lay mainly in the nervous shock. By the surgeon's direc-
tion her bed was carried into that room and laid upon the great
table: which happened to be well suited to the dressing of her in-
juries. When I saw her again, an hour afterwards, she lay indeed
where I had seen her strike her stick, and had heard her say she
would lie one day.

Though every vestige of her dress was burnt, as they told me,
she still had something of her old ghastly bridal appearance; for,
they had covered her to the throat with white-cotton wool, and as
she lay with a white sheet loosely overlying that, the phantom air
of something that had been and was changed was still upon her.

I found, on questioning the servants, that Estella was in Paris,
and I got a promise from the surgeon that he would write by the
next post. Miss Havisham's family I took upon myself; intending
to communicate with Matthew Pocket only, and leave him to do
as he liked about informing the rest. This I did the next day,
through Herbert, as soon as I returned to town.

There was a stage, that evening, when she spoke collectedly of
what had happened, though with a certain terrible vivacity. To-
wards midnight she began to wander in her speech, and after that
it gradually set in that she said innumerable times in a low solemn
voice, 'What have I done! ' and then, 'When she first came, I meant
to save her from misery like mine.' And then, 'Take the pencil and
write under my name, "I forgive her!" ' She never changed the
order of these three sentences, but she sometimes left out a word
in one or other of them; never putting in another word, but always
leaving a blank and going on to the next word.

As I could do no service there, and as I had, nearer home, that
pressing reason for anxiety and fear, which even her wanderings
could not drive out of my mind, I decided in the course of the

k

392 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

night that I would return by the early morning coach: walking on
a mile or so, and being taken up clear of the town. At about six
o'clock of the morning, therefore, I leaned over her and touched
her lips with mine, just as they said, not stopping for being
touched, Take the pencil and write under my name, '1 forgive
her." '

CHAPTER L

My hands had been dressed twice or thrice in the night, and again
in the morning. My left arm was a good deal burned to the elbow,
and, less severely, as high as the shoulder; it was very painful, but
the flames had set in that direction, and I felt thankful it was no
wcr-^-e. My right hand was not so badly burnt but that I could
move the fingers. It was bandaged, of course, but much less in-
conveniently than my left hand and arm: those I carried in a
sling; and I could only wear my coat like a cloak, loose over my
shoulders and fastened at the neck. My hair had been caught by
the fire, but not my head or face.

When Herbert had been down to Hammersmith and had seen his
father, he came back to me at our chambers, and devoted the day
to attending on me. He was the kindest of nurses, and at stated
times took off the bandages, and steeped them in the cooling liquid
that was kept ready, and put them on again, with a patient tender-
ness that I was deeply grateful for.

At first, as I lay quiet on the sofa, I found it painfully difficult,
I might say impossible, to get rid of the impression of the glare of
the flames, their hurry and noise, and the fierce burning smell. If
I dozed for a minute, I was awakened by Miss Havisham's cries,
and by her running at me with all that height of fire above her
head. This pain of the mind was much harder to strive against
than any bodily pain I suffered ; and Herbert, seeing that, did his
utmost to hold my attention engaged.

Neither of us spoke of the boat, but we both thought of it. That
was made apparent by our avoidance of the subject, and by our

I

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 393

agreeing — without agreement — to make my recovery of the use of
my hands, a question of so many hours, not of so many weeks.

My first question when I saw Herbert had been, of course,
whether all was well down the river? /\s he replied in the affirma-
tive, with perfect confidence and cheerfulness, we did not resume
the subject until the day was wearing away. But then, as Herbert
changed the bandages, more by the light of the fire than by the
outer light, he went back to it spontaneously.

'I sat with Provis last night, Handel, two good hours.'

'Where was Clara?'

'Dear little thing!' said Herbert. 'She was up and down with
Gruff andgrim all the evening. He was perpetually pegging at the
floor, the moment she left his sight. I doubt if he can hold out long
though. What with rum and pepper — and pepper and rum — I
should think his pegging must be nearly over.'

'And then you will be married, Herbert?'

'How can I take care of the dear child otherwise? — Lay your
arm out upon the back of the sofa, my dear boy, and 111 sit down
here, and get the bandage off so gradually that you shall not know
when it comes. I was speaking of Provis. Do you know, Handel,
he improves?'

'I said to you I thought he was softened when I last saw him.'

'So you did. And so he is. He was very communicative last
night, and told me more of his life. You remember his breaking
off here about some woman that he had had great trouble with. —
Did I hurt you?'

I had started but not under his touch. His words had given me
a start.

'I had forgotten that, Herbert, but I remember it now you speak
of it.'

'Well! He went into that part of his life, and a dark wild part
it is. Shall I tell you? Or would it worry you just now?'

'Tell me by all means Every word.'

Herbert bent forward to look at me more nearly, as if my reply
had been rather more hurried or more eager than he could quite
account for. 'Your head is cool?' he said, touching it.

'Quite,' said I. 'Tell me what Provis said, my dear Herbert.'

394 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

'It seems,' said Herbert, ' — there's a bandage off most charming-
ly, and now comes the cool one — makes you shrink at first, my
poor dear fellow, don't it? but it will be comfortable presently — it
seems that the woman was a young v/oman, and a jealous woman,
and a revengeful woman; revengeful, Handel, to the last degree.'
'To what last degree?'

'Murder. — Does it strike too cold on that sensitive place?'
T don't feel it. How did she murder? Whom did she murder?'
'Why, the deed may not have merited quite so terrible a name,'
said Herbert, 'but she was tried for it, and Mr. Jaggers defended
her, and the reputation of that defence first made his name known
to Provis. It was another and a stronger woman who was the vic-
tim, and there had been a struggle — in a barn. Who began it, or
how fair it was, or how unfair, may be doubtful; but how it ended
is certainly not doubtful, for the victim was found throttled.'
'Was the woman brought in guilty?'
'No; she was acquitted. — My poor Handel, I hurt you!'
'It is impossible to be gentler, Herbert. Yes? What else?'
'This acquitted young woman and Provis had a little child: a
little child of whom Provis was exceedingly fond. On the evening
of the very night when the object of her jealousy was strangled as
I tell you, the young woman presented herself before Provis for
one moment, and swore that she would destroy the child (which
was in her possession), and he should never see it again; then, she
vanished. — There's the worst arm comfortably in the sling once
more, and now there remains but the right hand, which is a far
easier job. I can do it better by this light than by a stronger, for
my hand is steadiest when I don't see the poor blistered patches
too distinctly. — You don't think your breathing is affected, my
dear boy? You seem to breathe quickly.'

'Perhaps I do, Herbert. Did the woman keep her oath?'
'There comes the darkest part of Provis's life. She did.'
'That is, he says she did.'

'Why, of course, my dear boy,' returned Herbert, in a tone of
surprise, and again bending forward to get a nearer look at me.
'He says it all. I have no other information.'
'No, to be sure.'

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 395

"Now, whether/ pursued Herbert, ^he had used the child's m(Dth-
er ill, or whether he had used the child's mother well, Provis
doesn't say; but, she had shared some four or five years of the
wretched life he described to us at this fireside, and he seems to
have felt pity for her, and forbearance towards her. Therefore,
fearing he should be called upon to depose about this destroyed
child, and so be the cause of her death, he hid himself (much as
he grieved for the child), kept himself dark, as he says, out of the
way and out of the trial, and was only vaguely talked of as a cer-
tain man called Abel, out of whom the jealousy arose. After the
acquittal she disappeared, and thus he lost the child, and the
child's mother.'

'I want to ask '

'A moment, my dear boy, and I have done. That evil genius.
Compeyson, the worst of scoundrels among many scoundrels,
knowing of his keeping out of the way at that time, and of his rea-
sons for doing so, of course afterwards held the knowledge over his
head as a means of keeping him poorer, and working him harder.
It was clear last night that this barbed the point of Provis's
animosity.'

'I want to know,' said I, 'and particularly, Herbert, whether he
told you when this happened ? '

Tarticularly? Let me remember, then, what he said as to that.
His expression was, "a round score o' year ago, and a'most directly
after I took up wi' Compeyson.'' How old were you when you
came upon him in the little churchyard?*

'I think in my seventh year.'

Ay. It had happened some three or four years then, he said, and
you brought into his mind the little girl so tragically lost, who
would have been about your age.'

'Herbert,' said I, after a short silence, in a hurried way, 'can you
see me best by the light of the window, or the light of the fire?'

'By the firelight,' answered Herbert, coming close again.

'Look at me.'

'I do look at you, my dear boy.'

'Touch me.'

'I do touch you, my dear boy.'

896 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

'Yon are not afraid that I am in any fever, or that my head is
much disordered by the accident of last night?'

*N-no, my dear boy,' said Herbert, after taking time to exam-
ine me. 'You are rather excited, but you are quite yourself.'

*I know I am quite myself. And the man we have in hiding
down the river, is Estella's Father.'

CHAPTER LI

What purpose I had in view when I was hot on tracing out and
proving Estella's parentage, I cannot say. It will presently be seen
that the question was not before me in a distinct shape, until it
was put before me by a wiser head than my own.

But, when Herbert and I had held our momentous conversation,
I was seized with a feverish conviction that I ought to hunt the
matter down — that I ought not to let it rest, but that I ought to
see Mr. Jaggers, and come at the bare truth. I really do not know
whether I felt that I did this for Estella's sake, or whether I was
glad to transfer to the man in whose preservation I was so much
concerned, some rays of the romantic interest that had so long
surrounded me. Perhaps the latter possibility may be the nearer to
the truth.

Any way, I could scarcely be withheld from going out to Ger-
rard Street that night. Herbert's representations that if I did, I
should probably be laid up and stricken useless, when our fugi-
tive's safety would depend upon me, alone restrained my impa-
tience. On the understanding, again and again reiterated, that
come what would, I was to go to ]Mr. Jaggers to-morrow, I at
length submitted to keep quiet, and to have my hurts looked after,
and to stay at home. Early next morning we went out together,
and at the corner of Giltspur Street by Smithfield, I left Herbert
to go his way into the City, and took my way to Little Britain.

There were periodical occasions when Mr. Jaggers and Mr.
Wemmick went over the office accounts, and checked off the vouch-
ers, and put all things straight. On these occasions Wemmick took

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 397

his books and papers into Mr. Jaggers's room, and one of the up-
stairs clerks came down into the outer office. Finding such clerk on
Wemmick's post that morning, I knew what was going on; but I
was not sorry to have Mr. Jaggers and Wemmick together, as
Wemmick would then hear for himself that I said nothing to com-
promise him.

My appearance with my arm bandaged and my coat loose over
my shoulders, favoured my object. Although I had sent Mr. Jag-
gers a brief account of the accident as soon as I had arrived in
town, yet I had to give him all the details now; and the specialty
of the occasion caused our talk to be less dry and hard, and less
strictly regulated by the rules of evidence, than it had been before.
While I described the disaster, Mr. Jaggers stood, according to his
wont, before the fire. Wemmick leaned back in his chair, staring
at me, with his hands in the pockets of his trousers, and his pen put
horizontally into the post. The two brutal casts, always insepar-
able in my mind from the official proceedings, seemed to be con-
gestively considering whether they didn't smell fire at the present
moment.

My narrative finished, and their questions exhausted, I then
produced Miss Havisham's authority to receive the nine hundred
pounds for Herbert. Mr. Jaggers's eyes retired a little deeper into
his head when I handed him the tablets, but he presently handed
them over to Wemmick, with instructions to draw the cheque for
his signature. While that was in course of being done, I looked on
at Wemmick as he wrote, and Mr. Jaggers, poising and swaying
himself on his well-polished boots, looked on at me. 'I am sorry,
Pip,' said he, as I put the cheque in my pocket, when he had
signed it, 'that we do nothing for you!

'Miss Havisham was good enough to ask me,' I returned,
whether she could do nothing for me, and I told her No.'

'Everybody should know his own business,' said Mr. Jaggers.
And I saw Wemmick's lips form the words 'portable property.'

'I should not have told her No, if I had been you,' said Mr.
Jaggers; 'but every man ought to know his own business best.'

'Every man's business,' said Wemmick, rather reproachfully to-
wards me, 'is "portable property." '

398 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

As I thought the time was now come for pursuing the theme I
had at heart, I said, turning on Mr. Jaggers:

'I did ask something of Miss Havisham, however, sir. I asked
her to give me some information relative to her adopted daughter,
and she gave me all she possessed.

'Did she?' said Mr. Jaggers, bending forward to look at his boots
and then straightening himself. 'Hah! I don't think I should have
done so, if I had been Miss Havisham. But she ought to know her
own business best.'

*1 know more of the history of Miss Havisham's adopted child,
than Miss Havisham herself does, sir. I know her mother.'

Mr. Jaggers looked at me inquiringly, and repeated 'Mother?'

'I have seen her mother within these three days.'

'Yes?' said Mr. Jaggers.

'And so have you, sir. And you have seen her still more
recently.'

'Yes?' said Mr. Jaggers.

'Perhaps I know more of Estella's history, than even you do,'
said I. 'I know her father, too.'

A certain stop that Mr. Jaggers came to in his manner — he was
too self-possessed to change his manner, but he could not help its
being brought to an indefinably attentive stop — assured me that he
did not know who her father was. This I had strongly suspected
from Provis's account (as Herbert had repeated it) of his having
kept himself dark; which I pieced on to the fact that he himself
was not Mr. Jaggers's client until some four years later, and when
he could have no reason for claiming his identity. But, I could not
be sure of this unconsciousness on Mr. Jaggers's part before,
though I was quite sure of it now.

'So! You know the young lady's father, Pip?' said Mr. Jaggers.

'Yes,' I replied, 'and his name is Provis — from New South
Wales.'

Even Mr. Jaggers started when I said those words. It was the
slightest start that could escape a man, the most carefully re-
pressed and the sooner checked, but he did start, though he made
it a part of the action of taking out his pocket-handkerchief. How
Wemmick received the announcement I am unable to say, for I was

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 399

afraid to look at him just then, lest Mr. Jaggers's sharpness should
detect that there had been some communication unknown to him
between us.

And on what evidence, Pip,' asked j\Ir. Jaggers, very coolly, as
he paused with his handkerchief half way to his nose, 'does Provis
make this claim?'

'He does not make it,' said I, 'and has never made it, and has no
knowledge or belief that his daughter is in existence.'

For once, the powerful pocket handkerchief failed. My reply
was so unexpected that Mr. Jaggers put the handkerchief back into
his pocket without completing the usual performance, folded his
arms, and looked with stern attention at me, though with an im-
movable face.

Then I told him all I knew, and how I knew it; with the one
reservation that I left him to infer that I knew from Miss Havi-
sham what I in fact knew from Wemmick. I was very careful in-
deed as to that. Nor, did I look towards Wemmick until I had
finished all I had to tell, and had been for some time silently meet-
ing Mr. Jaggers's look. When I did at last turn my eyes in Wem-
mick's direction, I found that he had unposted his pen, and was
intent upon the table before him.

'Hah! ' said Mr. Jaggers at last, as he moved towards the papers
on the table. ' — What item was it you were at, Wemmick, when
Mr. Pip came in?'

But I could not submit to be thrown off in that way, and I made
a passionate, almost an indignant appeal to him to be more frank
and manly with me. I reminded him of the false hopes into which
I had lapsed, the length of time they had lasted, and the discovery
I had made: and I hinted at the danger that weighed upon my
spirits. I represented myself as being surely worthy of some little
confidence from him, in return for the confidence I had just now
imparted. I said that I did not blame him, or suspect him, or mis-
trust him, but I wanted assurance of the truth from him. And if
he asked me why I wanted it and why I thought I had any right to
it, I would tell him, little as he cared for such poor dreams, that I
had loved Estella dearly and long, and that, although I had lost
her and must live a bereaved life, whatever concerned her was still

400 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

nearer and dearer to me than anything else in the world. And see-
ing that Mr. Jaggers stood quite still and silent, and apparently
quite obdurate, under this appeal, I turned to Wemmick, and said,
'Wemmick, I know you to be a man with a gentle heart. I have
seen your pleasant home, and your old father, and all the innocent
cheerful ways with which you refresh your business life. And I
entreat you to say a word for me to Mr. Jaggers, and to represent
to him that, all circumstances considered, he ought to be more open
with me ! '

I have never seen two men look more oddly at one another than
Mr. Jaggers and Wemmick did after this apostrophe. At first, a
misgiving crossed me that Wemmick would be instantly dismissed
from his employment; but, it melted as I saw Mr. Jaggers relax
into something like a smile, and Wemmick become bolder.

'What's all this?' said Mr. Jaggers. 'You with an old father, and
you with pleasant and playful ways?'

'Well! ' returned Wemmick. 'If I don't bring 'em here, what does
it matter?'

'Pip,' said Mr. Jaggers, laying his hand upon my arm, and smil-
ing openly, 'this man must be the most cunning impostor in all
London.'

'Not a bit of it,' returned Wemmick, growing bolder and bolder.
'I think you're another.'

Again they exchanged their former odd looks, each apparently
still distrustful that the other was taking him in.

'You with a pleasant home?' said Mr. Jaggers.

'Since it don't interfere with business,' returned Wemmick, 'let
it be so. Now I look at you, sir, I shouldn't wonder if you might
be planning and contriving to have a pleasant home of your own,
one of these days, when you're tired of all this work.'

Mr. Jaggers nodded his head retrospectively two or three times,
and actually drew a sigh. 'Pip,' said he, 'we won't talk about "poor
dreams"; you know more about such things than I, having much
fresher experience of that kind. But now, about this other matter.
I'll put a case to you. Mind! I admit nothing.'

He waited for me to declare that I quite understood that he ex-
pressly said that he admitted nothing.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 401

'Now, Pip/ said Mr. Jaggers, 'put this case. Put the case that a
woman, under such circumstances as you have mentioned, held her
child concealed, and was obliged to communicate the fact to her
legal adviser, on his representing to her that he must know, with
an eye to the latitude of his defence, how the fact stood about that
child. Put the case that at the same time he held a trust to find a
child for an eccentric rich lady to adopt and bring up.'

'I follow you, sir.'

Tut the case that he lived in an atmosphere of evil, and that all
he saw of children was, their being generated in great numbers for
certain destruction. Put the case that he often saw children sol-
emnly tried at a criminal bar, where they were held up to be seen ;
put the case that he habitually knew of their being imprisoned,
whipped, transported, neglected, cast out, qualified in all ways for
the hangman, and growing up to be hanged. Put the case that
pretty nigh all the children he saw in his daily business life, he had
reason to look upon as so much spawn, to develop into the fish that
were to come to his net — to be prosecuted, defended, forsworn,
made orphans, bedevilled somehow.'

'I follow you, sir.'

Tut the case, Pip, that here was one pretty little child out of the
heap who could be saved; whom the father believed dead, and
dared make no stir about; as to whom, over the mother, the legal
adviser had this power: "I know what you did, and how you did
it. You came so and so, you did such and such things to divert
suspicion. I have tracked you through it all, and I tell it you all.
Part with the child, unless it should be necessary to produce it to
clear you, and then it shall be produced. Give the child into my
hands, and I will do my best to bring you off. If you are saved,
your child will be saved too; if you are lost, your child is still
saved." Put the case that this was done, and that the woman was
cleared.'

'I understand you perfectly.'

'But that I make no admissions?'

'That you make no admissions.' And Wemmick repeated, 'No
admissions.'

'Put the case, Pip, that passion and the terror of death had a

402 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

little shaken the woman's intellects, and that when she was .^et at
liberty, she was scared out of the ways of the world and went to
him to be sheltered. Put the case that he took her in, and that he
kept down the old wild violent nature, whenever he saw an inkling
of its breaking out, by asserting his power over her in the old way.
Do you comprehend the imaginary case?'

'Quite/

Tut the case that the child grew up, and was married for money.
That the mother was still living. That the father was still living.
That the mother and father, unknown to one another, were dwell-
ing within so many miles, furlongs, yards if you like, of one an-
other. That the secret was still a secret, except that you had got
wind of it. Put that last case to yourself very carefully.'

'I do.'

'I ask Wemmick to put it to himself very carefully.'

And Wemmick said, 'I do.'

Tor whose sake would you reveal the secret? — For the father's?
1 think he would not be much the better for the mother. For the
mother's? I think if she had done such a deed she would be safer
where she was. For the daughter's? I think it would hardly serve
her, to establish her parentage for the information of her husband,
and to drag her back to disgrace, after an escape of twenty years,
pretty secure to last for life. But, add the case that you had loved
her, Pip, and had made her the subject of those "poor dreams"
which have, at one time or another, been in the heads of more men
than you think likely, then I tell you that you had better — and
would much sooner when you had thought well of it — chop off that
bandaged left hand of yours with your bandaged right hand, and
then pass the chopper on to \\'emmick there, to cut that off, too.'

I looked at Wemmick, whose face was very grave. He gravely
touched his lips with his forefinger. I did the same. Mr. Jaggers
did the same. 'Now, Wemmick,' said the latter then, resuming his
usual manner, 'what item was it you were at, when iMr. Pip came
in?'

Standing by for a little, while they were at work, 1 observed that
the odd looks they had cast at one another were repeated several
times: with this difference now, that each of them seemed suspi-

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 403

cious, not to say conscious, of having shown himself in a weak and
unprofessional light to the other. For this reason, I suppose, they
were now inflexible with one another; Mr. Jaggers being highly
dictatorial, and Wemmick obstinately justifying himself whenever
there was the smallest point in abeyance for a moment. I had
never seen them on such ill terms; for generally they got on very
well indeed together.

But, they were both happily relieved by the opportune appear-
ance of Mike, the client with the fur cap, and the habit of wiping
his nose on his sleeve, whom I had seen on the very first day of my
appearance within those walls. This individual, who, either in his
own person or in that of some member of his family, seemed to be
alw^ays in trouble (which in that place meant Newgate), called to
announce that his eldest daughter was taken up on suspicion of
shoplifting. As he imparted this melancholy circumstance to Wem-
mick, Mr. Jaggers standing magisterially before the fire and taking
no share in the proceedings, Mike's eye happened to twinkle with
a tear.

'What are you about?' demanded Wemmick, with the utmost in-
dignation. 'What do you come snivelling here for?'

'I didn't go to do it, Mr. Wemmick.'

'You did,' said Wemmick. 'How dare you? You're not in a fit
state to come here, if you can't come here without spluttering like
a bad pen. What do you mean by it?'

'A man can't help his feelings, Mr. Wemmick,' pleaded Mike.

'His what?' demanded Wemmick, quite savagely. 'Say that
again!'

'Now look here, my man,' said ]Mr. Jaggers, advancing a step,
and pointing to the door. 'Get out of this office. I'll have no feel-
ings here. Get out.'

'It serves you right,' said Wemmick. 'Get out.'

So the unfortunate iMike very humbly withdrew, and Mr. Jag-
gers and Wemmick appeared to have reestablished their good un-
derstanding, and went to work again with an air of refreshment
upon them as if they had just had lunch.

404 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

CHAPTER LII

From Little Britain, I went, with my cheque in my pocket, to Miss
Skiffins's brother, the accountant; and Miss Skiffins's brother, the
accountant, going straight to Clarriker's and bringing Clarriker to
me, I had the great satisfaction of concluding that arrangement.
It was the only good thing I had done, and the only completed
thing I had done, since I was first apprised of my great ex-
pectations.

Clarriker informing me on that occasion that the affairs of the
House were steadily progressing, that he would now be able to es-
tablish a small branch-house in the East which was much wanted
for the extension of the business, and that Herbert in his new part-
nership capacity would go out and take charge of it, I found that
I must have prepared for a separation from my friend, even though
my own affairs had been more settled. And now indeed I felt as if
my last anchor were loosening its hold, and I should soon be driv-
ing with the winds and waves.

But, there was recompense in the joy with which Herbert would
come home of a night and tell me of these changes, little imagin-
ing that he told me no news, and would sketch airy pictures of him-
self conducting Clara Barley to the land of the Arabian Nights,
and of me going out to join them (with a caravan of camels, I be-
lieve), and of our all going up the Nile and seeing wonders. With-
out being sanguine as to my own part in those bright plans, I felt
that Herbert's way was clearing fast, and that old Bill Barley had
but to stick to his pepper and rum, and his daughter would soon be
happily provided for.

We had now got into the month of March. My left arm, though
it presented no bad symptoms, took in the natural course so long
to heal that I was still unable to get a coat on. My right arm was
tolerably restored; disfigured, but fairly serviceable.

On a Monday morning, when Herbert and I were at breakfast, I
received the following letter from Wemmick by the post.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 405

'Walworth. Burn this as soon as read. Early in the week, or
say Wednesday, you might do what you know of, if you felt dis-
posed to try it. Now burn.'

When I had shown this to Herbert and had put it in the fire —
but not before we had both got it by heart — we considered what
to do. For, of course, my being disabled could now be no longer
kept out of view.

'I have thought it over, again and again,' said Herbert, 'and I
think I know a better course than taking a Thames waterman.
Take Startop. A good fellow, a skilled hand, fond of us, and en-
thusiastic and honourable.'

I had thought of him, more than once.

'But how much would you tell him, Herbert?'

'It is necessary to tell him very little. Let him suppose it a mere
freak, but a secret one, until the morning comes: then let him know
that there is urgent reason for your getting Provis aboard and
away. You go with him?'

'No doubt.'

'Where?'

It had seemed to me, in the many anxious considerations I had
given the point, almost indifferent what port we made for — Ham-
burg, Rotterdam, Antwerp — the place signified little, so that he
was out of England. Any foreign steamer that fell in our way and
would take us up would do. I had always proposed to myself to
get him well down the river in the boat; certainly well beyond
Gravesend, which was a critical place for search or inquiry if sus-
picion were afoot. As foreign steamers would leave London at
about the time of high-water, our plan would be to get down the
river by a previous ebb-tide, and lie by in some quiet spot until we
could pull off to one. The time when one would be due where we
lay, wherever that might me, could be calculated pretty nearly, if
we made inquiries beforehand.

Herbert assented to all this, and we went out immediately after
breakfast to pursue our investigations. We found that a steamer
for Hamburg was likely to suit our purpose best, and we directed

406 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

our thoughts chiefly to that vessel. But we noted down what other
foreign steamers would leave London with the same tide, and we
satisfied ourselves that we knew the build and colour of each. We
then separated for a few hours; I to get at once such passports as
were necessary; Herbert, to see Startop at his lodgings. We both ■
did what we had to do without any hindrance, and when we met
again at one o'clock reported it done. I, for my part, was prepared
with passports; Herbert had seen Startop, and he was more than ■
ready to join.

Those two would pull a pair of oars, we settled, and I would
steer: our charge would be sitter, and keep quiet; as speed was not
our object, we should make way enough. We arranged that Her-
bert should not come home to dinner before going to Mill Pond j
Bank that evening; that he should not go there at all, to-morrow
evening, Tuesday; that he should prepare Provis to come down to
some Stairs hard by the house, on Wednesday, when he saw us
approach, and not sooner; that all the arrangements with him
should be concluded that Monday night; and that he should be
communicated with no more in any way, until we took him on
board.

These precautions well understood by both of us, I went home.

On opening the outer door of our chambers with my key, I found
a letter in the box, directed to me; a very dirty letter, though not
ill-written. It had been delivered by hand (of course since I left
home), and its contents were these:

Tf you are not afraid to come to the old marshes to-night ot
to-morrow night at Nine, and to come to the little sluice-house by
the limekiln, you had better come. If you want information re-
garding your uncle Provis, you had much better come and tell no
one and lose no time. You must come alone. Bring this with you.'

I had had load enough upon my mind before the receipt of this
strange letter. What to do now, I could not tell. And the worst
was, that I must decide quickly, or I should miss the afternoon
coach, which would take me down in time for to-night. To-morrow
night I could not think of going, for it would be too close upon the

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 407

time of the flight. And again, for anything I knew, the proffered
information might have some important bearing on the flight itself.

If I had had ample time for consideration, I believe I should still
have gone. Having hardly any time for consideration — my watch
showing me that the coach started within half an hour — I resolved
to go. I should certainly not have gone, but for the reference to
my Uncle Provis. That, coming on Wemmick's letter and the
morning's busy preparation, turned the scale.

It is so difficult to become clearly possessed of the contents of
almost any letter, in a violent hurry, that I had to read this my-
sterious epistle again, twice, before its injunction to me to be
secret got mechanically into my mind. Yielding to it in the same
mechanical kind ot way, I left a note in pencil for Herbert, telling
him that as I should be so soon going away, I knew not for how
long, I had decided to hurry down and back, to ascertain for my-
self how Miss Havisham was faring. I had then barely time to get
my great-coat, lock up the chambers, and make for the coach-
office by the short by-ways. If I had taken a hackney-chariot and
gone by the streets, I should have missed my aim ; going as I did,
I caught the coach just as it came out of the yard. I was the only
inside passenger, jolting away knee-deep in straw, when I came to
myself.

For, I really had not been myself since the receipt of the letter ;
it had so bewildered me, ensuing on the hurry of the morning.
The morning hurry and flutter had been great, for, long and an-
xiously as I had waited for Wemmick, his hint had come like a
surprise at last. And now, I began to wonder at myself for being
in the coach, and to doubt whether I had sufficient reason for be-
ing there, and to consider whether I should get out presently and
go back, and to argue against ever heeding an anonymous com-
munication, and, in short, to pass through all those phases of con-
tradiction and indecision to which I suppose very few hurried peo-
ple are strangers. Still, the reference to Provis by name, mastered
everything. I reasoned as I had reasoned already without knowing
it — if that be reasoning — in case any harm should befall him
through my not going, how could I ever forgive myself!

It was dark before we got down, and the journey seemed long

408 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

and dreary to me who could see little of it inside, and who could
not go outside in my disabled state. Avoiding the Blue Boar, I put
up at an inn of minor reputation down the town, and ordered some
dinner. While it was preparing, I v^^ent to Satis House and in-
quired for Miss Havisham; she was still very ill, though considered
something better.

My inn had once been a part of an ancient ecclesiastical house,
and I dined in a little octagonal common-room, like a font. As I
was not able to cut my dinner, the old landlord with a shining bald
head did it for me. This bringing us into conversation, he was so
good as to entertain me with my own story — of course with the
popular feature that Pumblechook was my earliest benefactor and
the founder of my fortunes.

'Do you know the young man?' said I.

'Know him?' repeated the landlord. 'Ever since he was — no
height at all.'

'Does he ever come back to this neighbourhood?'

'Ay, he comes back,' said the landlord, 'to his great friends, now
and again, and gives the cold shoulder to the man that made him.'

'What man is that?'

'Him that I speak of,' said the landlord. 'Mr. Pumblechook.'

'Is he ungrateful to no one else?'

'No doubt he would be, if he could,' returned the landlord, 'but
he can't. And why? Because Pumblechook done everything for
him.'

'Does Pumblechook say so?'

'Say so!' replied the landlord. 'He han't no call to say so.'

'But does he say so?'

Tt would turn a man's blood to white wine winegar, to hear him
tell of it, sir,' said the landlord.

I thought, 'Yet Joe, dear Joe, you never tell of it. Long-suffering
and loving Joe, you never complain. Nor you, sweet-tempered
Biddy!'

'Your appetite's been touched like, by your accident,' said the
landloard, glancing at the bandaged arm under my coat. 'Try a
tenderer bit.'

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 409

'No, thank you,' I replied, turning from the table to brood over
the fire. 'I can eat no more. Please take it away.'

I had never been struck at so keenly, for my thanklessness to
Joe, as through the brazen impostor Pumblechook. The falser he,
the truer Joe; the meaner he, the nobler Joe.

My heart was deeply and most deservedly humbled as I mused
over the fire for an hour or more. The striking of the clock aroused
me, but not from my dejection or remorse, and I got up and had
my coat fastened round my neck, and went out. I had previously
sought in my pockets for the letter, that I might refer to it again,
but I could not find it, and was uneasy to think that it must have
been dropped in the straw of the coach. I knew very well, however,
that the appointed place was the little sluice-house by the limekiln
on the marshes, and the hour nine. Towards the marshes I now
went straight, having no time to spare.

CHAPTER LIII

It was a dark night, though the full moon rose as I left the en-
closed lands, and passed out upon the marshes. Beyond their dark
line there was a ribbon of clear sky, hardly broad enough to hold
the red large moon. In a few minutes she had ascended out of that
clear field, in among the piled mountains of cloud.

There was a melancholy wind, and the marshes were very dis-
mal. A stranger would have found them insupportable, and even
to me they were so oppressive that I hesitated, half inclined to go
back. But, I knew them, and could have found my way on a far
darker night, and had no excuse for returning, being there. So,
having come there against my inclination, I went on against it.

The direction that I took, was not that in which my old home
lay, nor that in which we had pursued the convicts. My back was
turned towards the distant Hulks as I walked on, and, though I
could see the old lights away on the spits of sand, I saw them over
my shoulder. I knew the limekiln as well as I knew the old Bat-

410 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

tery, but they were miles apart; so that if a light had been burning
at each point that night, there would have been a long strip of the
blank horizon between the two bright specks.

At first, I had to shut some gates after me, and now and then to
stand still while the cattle that were lying in the banked-up path-
way, arose and blundered down among the grass and reeds. But
after a little while, I seemed to have the whole flats to myself.

It was another half-hour before I drew near to the kiln. The
lime was burning with a sluggish stifling smell, but the fires were
made up and left, and no workmen were visible. Hard by was a
small stone-quarry. It lay directly in my way, and had been worked
that day, as I saw by the tools and barrows that were lying about.

Coming up again to the marsh level out of this excavation — for
the rude path lay through it — I saw a light in the old sluice-house.
I quickened my pace, and knocked at the door with my hand.
Waiting for some reply, I looked about me, noticing how the sluice
was abandoned and broken, and now the house — of wood with a
tiled roof — would not be proof against the weather much longer, if
it were so even now, and how the mud and ooze were coated with
lime, and how the choking vapour of the kiln crept in a ghostly
way towards me. Still there was no answer, and I knocked again.
No answer still, and I tried the latch.

It rose under my hand, and the door yielded. Looking in, I saw
a lighted candle on a table, a bench, and a mattress on a truckle
bedstead. As there was a loft above, I called, 'Is there any one
here?^ but no voice answered. Then, I looked at my watch, and,
finding that it was past nine, called again, Is there any one here?'
There being still no answer, I went out at the door, irresolute what
to do.

It was beginning to rain fast. Seeing nothing save what I had j
seen already, I turned back into the house, and stood just within
the shelter of the doorway, looking out into the night. While I was .
considering that some one must have been there lately and must
soon be coming back, or the candle would not be burning, it came
into my head to look if the wick were long. I turned round to do
so, and had taken up the candle in m\'' hand, w^hen it was extin-
^'uished by some violent shock, and the next thing I comprehended

On the Marshes by the Limekiln

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 411

was, that I had been caught in a strong running noose, thrown
over my head from behind.

'Now,' said a suppressed voice with an oath, 'I've got you! '

'What is this?' I cried, struggling. 'Who is it? Help, help, help! '

Not only were my arms pulled close to my sides, but the pres-
sure on my bad arm caused me exquisite pain. Sometimes a strong
man's hand, sometimes a strong man's breast, was set against my
mouth to deaden my cries, and with a hot breath always close to
me, I struggled ineffectually in the dark, while I was fastened tight
to the wall. 'And now,' said the suppressed voice with another
oath, 'call out again, and I'll make short work of you!'

Faint and sick with the pain of my injured arm, bewildered by
the surprise, and yet conscious how easily this threat could be put
in execution, I desisted, and tried to ease my arm were it ever so
little. But it was bound too tight for that. I felt as if, having been
burnt before, it were now being boiled.

• The sudden exclusion of the night and the substitution of black
darkness in its place, warned me that the man had closed a shutter.
After groping about for a little, he found the flint and steel he
wanted, and began to strike a light. I strained my sight upon the
sparks that fell among the tinder, and upon which he breathed
and breathed, match in hand, but I could only see his lips, and the
blue point of the match; even those but fitfully. The tinder was
damp — no wonder there — and one after another the sparks died
out.

The man was in no hurry, and struck again with the flint and
steel. As the sparks fell thick and bright about him, I could see
his hands and touches of his face, and could make out that he was
seated and bending over the table; but nothing more. Presently
I saw his blue lip again, breathing on the tinder, and then a flare of
light flashed up, and showed me Orlick.

Whom I had looked for, I don't know. I had not looked for him.
Seeing him, I felt that I was in a dangerous strait indeed, and I
kept my eyes upon him.

He lighted the candle from the flaring match with great delibera-
tion, and dropped the match, and trod it out. Then, he put the
candle away from him on the table, so that he could see me, and

412 GREAT EXPIXTATIONS

sat with his arms folded on the table and looked at me. I made out
that I was fastened to a stout perpendicular ladder a few inches
from the wall — a fixture there — the means of ascent to the lofl
above.

'Now,' said he, when we had surveyed one another for some
time, *I've got you.'

'Unbind me. Let me go!'

'Ah!' he returned, 7'11 let you go. I'll let you go to the moon,
I'll let you go to the stars. All in good time.'

'Why have you lured me here?'

'Don't you know?' said he, with a deadly look.

'Why have you set upon me in the dark?'

'Because I mean to do it all myself. One keeps a secret better
than two. Oh you enemy, you enemy! '

His enjoyment of the spectacle I furnished, as he sat with his
arms folded on the table, shaking his head at me and hugging him-
self, had a malignity in it that made m,8 tremble. As I watched
him in silence, he put his hand into the corner at his side, and took
up a gun with a brass-bound stock.

'Do you know this?' said he, making as if he would take aim at
me. 'Do you know where you saw it afore? Speak, wolf!*

'Yes,' I answered.

'You cost me that place. You did. Speak!'

'What else could I do?'

'You did that, and that would be enough, without more. How
dared you come betwixt me and a young woman I liked?'

'When did I?'

'When didn't you? It was you as always give Old Orlick a bad
name to her.'

'You gave it to yourself; you gained it for yourself. I could have
done you no harm, if you had done yourself none.'

'You're a liar. And you'll take any pains, and spend any money,
to drive me out of this country, will you?' said he, repeating my
words to Biddy, in the last interview I had with her. 'Now, I'll tell
you a piece of information. It was never so worth your while to
get me out of this country, as it is to-night. Ah! If it was all your
money twenty times told, to the last brass farden!' As he shook

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 413

his heavy hand at me, with his mouth snarling like a tiger's, I felt
that it was true.

'What are you going to do to me?'

Tm a-going,' said he, bringing his fist down upon the table with
a heavy blow, and rising as the blow fell, to give it greater force.
'I'm a-going to have your life!'

He leaned forward staring at me, slowly unclenched his hand
and drew it across his mouth as if his mouth watered for me, and
sat down again.

'You was always in Old Orlick's way since ever you was a child.
You goes out of his way this present night. He'll have no more on
you. You're dead.'

I felt that I had come to the brink of my grave. For a moment
I looked wildly round my trap for any chance of escape ; but there
was none.

'More than that,' said he, folding his arms on the table again.
*I won't have a rag of you, I won't have a bone of you, left on
earth. I'll put your body in the kiln — I'd carry two such to it, on
my shoulders — and, let people suppose what they may of you, they
shall never know nothing.'

My mind, with inconceivable rapidity, followed out all the con-
sequences of such a death. Estella's father would believe I had
deserted him, would be taken, would die accusing me; even Her-
bert would doubt me, when he compared the letter I had left for
him, with the fact that I had called at Miss Havisham's gate for
only a moment; Joe and Biddy would never know how sorry I
had been that night, none would ever know what I had suffered,
how true I had meant to be, what an agony I had passed through.
The death close before me was terrible, but far more terrible than
death was the dread of being misremembered after death. And so
quick were my thoughts, that I saw myself despised by unborn
generations — Estella's children, and their children — while the
wretch's words were yet on his lips.

'Now, wolf,' said he, 'afore I kill you like any other beast —
which is wot I mean to do and wot I have tied you up for — I'll
have a good look at you and a good goad at you. Oh, you enemy! "

It had passed through my thoughts to cry out for help again;

414 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

though few could know better than I, the solitary nature of the
spot, and the hopelessness of aid. But as he sat gloating over me,
I was supported by a scornful detestation of him that sealed my
lips. Above all things, I resolved that I would not entreat him,
and that I would die making some last poor resistance to him.
Softened as my thoughts of all the rest of men were in that dire
extremity; humbly beseeching pardon, as I did, of Heaven; melted
at heart, as I was, by the thought that I had taken no farewell, and
never now could take farewell, of those who were dear to me, or
could explain myself to them, or ask for their compassion on my
miserable errors; still, if I could have killed him, even in dying,
I would have done it.

He had been drinking, and his eyes were red and blood-shot.
Around his neck was slung a tin bottle, as I had often seen his meat
and drink slung about him in other days. He brought the bottle
to his lips, and took a fiery drink from it; and I smelt the strong
spirits that I saw flash into his face.

'Wolf!' said he, folding his arms again, 'Old Orlick's a-going to
tell you somethink. It was you as did for your shrew sister.'

Again my mind, with its former inconceivable rapidity, had ex-
hausted the whole subject of the attack upon my sister, her illness,
and her death, before his slow and hesitating speech had formed
those words.

'It was you, villain,' said I.

'I tell you it was your doing — I tell you it was done through
you,' he retorted, catching up the gun, and making a blow with the
stock at the vacant air between us. 'I come upon her from behind,
as I come upon you to-night. I giv' it her! I left her for dead,
and if there had been a limekiln as nigh her as there is now nigh
you, she shouldn't have come to life again. But it warn't Old Or-
lick as did it; it was you. You was favoured, and he was bullied
and beat. Old Orlick bullied and beat, eh? Now you pays for it.
You done it; now you pays for it.'

He drank again, and became more ferocious. I saw by his tilt-
ing of the bottle that there was no great quantity left in it. I dis-
tinctly understood that he was working himself up with its con-
tents, to make an end of me. I knew that every drop it held, was

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 415

a drop of my life. I knew that when I was changed into a part of
the vapour that had crept towards me but a little while before, like
my own warning ghost, he would do as he had done in my sister's
case — make all haste to the town, and be seen slouching about
there, drinking at the ale-houses. My rapid mind pursued him to
the town, made a picture of the street with him in it, and con-
trasted its lights and life with the lonely marsh and the white
vapour creeping over it, into which I should have dissolved.

It was not only that I could have summed up years and year?
while he said a dozen words, but that what he did say, presented
pictures to me, and not mere words. In the excited and exalted
state of my brain, I could not think of a place without seeing it,
or of persons without seeing them. It is impossible to overstate
the vividness of these images, and yet I was so intent, all the time,
upon him himself — who would not be intent on the tiger crouch-
ing to spring! — that I knew of the slightest action of his fingers.

When he had drunk this second time, he rose from the bench on
which he sat, and pushed the table aside. Then, he took up the
candle, and shading it with his murderous hand so as to throw its
light on me, stood before me, looking at me and enjoying the sight.

'Wolf, I'll tell you something more. It was Old Orlick as you
tumbled over on your stairs that night.'

I saw the staircase with its extinguished lamps. I saw the shad-
ows of the heavy stair-rails, thrown by the watchman's lantern on
the wall. I saw the rooms that I was never to see again; here, a
door half open; there, a door closed; all the articles of furniture
around.

'And why was Old Orlick there? I'll tell you something more,
wolf. You and her have pretty well hunted me out of this country,
so far as getting a easy Hving in it goes, and I've took up with new
companions and new masters. Some of 'em writes my letters when
I wants 'em wrote — do you mind? — writes my letters, wolf! They
writes fifty hands; they're not like sneaking you, as writes but one.
I've had a firm mind and a firm will to have your life, since you
was down here at your sister's burying. I han't seen a way to get
you safe, and I've looked arter you to know your ins and outs. For,
says Old Orlick to himself, "Somehow or another I'll have him!"

416 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

What! When I looks for you, I finds your uncle Provis, eh?'

Mill Pond Bank, and Chink's Basin, and the Old Green Copper
Rope- Walk, all so clear and plain ! Provis in his rooms, the signal
whose use was over, pretty Clara, the good motherly woman, old
Bill Barley on his back, all drifting by, as on the swift stream of
my life fast running out to sea!

' You with a uncle too ! Why, I knowed you at Gargery 's when
you was so small a wolf that I could have took your weazen betwixt
this finger and thumb and chucked you away dead (as I'd
thoughts o' doing, odd times, when I saw you a loitering among the
pollards on a Sunday), and you hadn't found no uncles then. No,
not you! But when Old Orlick come for to hear that your uncle
Provis had mostlike wore the leg-iron wot Old Orlick had picked
up, filed asunder, on these meshes ever so many year ago, and wot
he kep by him till he dropped your sister with it, like a bullock,
as he means to drop you — hey? — when he come for to hear that —
hey?—'

In his savage taunting, he flared the candle so close to me, that
I turned my face aside to save it from the flame.

'Ah!' he cried, laughing, after doing it again, 'the burnt child
dreads the fire! Old Orlick knowed you was burnt, Old Orlick
knowed you w^as a smuggling your uncle Provis away. Old Orlick's
a match for you and know'd you'd come to-night! Now I'll tell
you something more, wolf, and this ends it. There's them that's
as good a match for your uncle Provis as Old Orlick has been for
you. Let him 'ware them when he's lost his nevvy. Let him 'ware
them, when no man can't find a rag of his dear relation's clothes,
nor yet a bone of his body. There's them that can't and that won't
have Magwitch — yes, / know the name! — alive in the same land
with them, and that's had such sure information of him when he
was alive in another land, as that he couldn't and shouldn't leave
it unbeknown and put them in danger. P'raps it's them that writes
fifty hands, and that's not like sneaking you as writes but one.
'Ware Compeyson, Magwitch, and the gallows!'

He flared the candle at me again, smoking my face and hair,
and for an instant blinding me, and turned his powerful back as
he replaced the light on the table. I l:ad thought a prayer, and had

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 417

been with Joe and Biddy and Herbert, before he turned towards
me again.

There was a clear space of a few feet between the table and the
opposite wall. Within this space, he now slouched backwards and
forwards. His great strength seemed to sit stronger upon him. than
ever before, as he did this with his hands hanging loose and heavy
at his sides, and with his eyes scowling at me. I had no grain of
hope left. Wild as my inward hurry was, and wonderful the force
of the pictures that rushed by me instead of thoughts, I could yet
clearly understand that unless he had resolved that I was within
a few moments of surely perishing out of all human knowledge,
he would never have told me what he had told.

Of a sudden, he stopped, took the cork out of his bottle, and
tossed it away. Light as it was, I heard it fall like a plummet. He
swallowed slowly, tilting up the bottle by little and little, and now
he looked at me no more. The last few drops of liquor he poured
into the palm of his hand, and licked up. Then with a sudden
hurry of violence and swearing horribly, he threw the bottle from
him, and stooped; and I saw in his hand a stone-hammer with a
long heavy handle.

The resolution I had made did not desert me, for without utter-
ing one vain word of appeal to him, I shouted out with all my
might, and struggled with all my might. It was only my head and
my legs that I could move, but to that extent I struggled with all
the force, until then unknown, that was within me. In the same in-
stant I heard responsive shouts, saw figures and a gleam of light
dash in at the door, heard voices and tumult, and saw Orlick
emerge from a struggle of men, as if it were tumbling water, clear
the table at a leap, and fly out into the night!

After a blank, I found that I was lying unbound on the floor, in
the same place, with my head on some one's knee. My eyes were
fixed on tne ladder against the wall, when I came to myself — had
opened on it before my mind saw it — and thus as I recovered con-
sciousness, I knew that I was in the place where I had lost it.

Too indifferent at first, even to look around and ascertain who
supported me, I was lying looking at the ladder, when there came
between me and it, a face. The face of Trabb's boy!

418 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

'I think he's all right!' said Trabb's boy, in a sober voice; 'but
ain't he just pale though!'

At these words, the face of him who supported me looked over
into mine, and I saw my supporter to be —

'Herbert! Great Heaven ! '

'Softly,' said Herbert. 'Gently, Handel. Don't be too eager.'

'And our old comrade, Startop!' I cried, as he too bent over me.

'Remember what he is going to assist us in,' said Herbert, 'and
be calm.'

The allusion made me spring up ; though I dropped again from
the pain in my arm. 'The time has not gone by, Herbert, has it?
What night is to-night? How long have I been here? For, I had a
strange and strong misgiving that I had been lying there a long
time — a day and a night — two days and nights — more.

'The time has not gone by. It is still Monday night.'

Thank God!'

'And you have all to-morrow, Tuesday, to rest in,' said Herbert.
'But you can't help groaning, my dear Handel. What hurt have
you got? Can you stand?'

'Yes, yes,' said I, 'I can walk. I have no hurt but in this throb-
bing arm.'

They laid it bare, and did what they could. It was violently
swollen and inflamed, and I could scarcely endure to have it
touched. But, they tore up their handkerchiefs to make fresh
bandages, and carefully replaced it in the sling, until we could get
to the town and obtain some cooling lotion to put upon it. In a
little while we had shut the door of the dark and empty sluice-
house, and were passing through the quarry on our way back.
Trabb's boy — Trabb's over-grown young man now — went before
us with a lantern, which was the light I had seen come in at the
door. But, the moon was a good two hours higher than when I had
last seen the sky, and the night though rainy was much lighter.
The white vapour of the kiln was passing from us as we went by,
and, as I had thought a prayer before, I thought a thanksgiving
now.

Entreating Herbert to tell me how he had come to my rescue —
which at first he had flatly refused to do, but had insisted on my

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 419

remaining quiet — I learnt that I had in my hurry dropped the let-
ter, open, in our chambers, where he, coming home to bring with
him Startop, whom he had met in the street on his way to me,
found it, very soon after I was gone. Its tone made him uneasy,
and the more so because of the inconsistency between it and the
hasty letter I had left for him. His uneasiness increasing instead
of subsiding after a quarter of an hour's consideration, he set off
for the coach-office, with Startop, who volunteered his company,
to make inquiry when the next coach went down. Finding that the
afternoon coach was gone, and finding that his uneasiness grew in-
to positive alarm, as obstacles came in his way, he resolved to fol-
low in a post-chaise. So, he and Startop arrived at the Blue Boar,
fully expecting there to find me, or tidings of me; but, finding
neither, went on to Miss Havisham's where they lost me. Here-
upon they went back to the hotel (doubtless at about the time
when I was hearing the popular local version of my own story) , to
refresh themselves and to get some one to guide them out upon
the marshes. Among the loungers under the Boar's archway, hap-
pened to be Trabb's boy — true to his ancient habit of happening
to be everywhere where had no business — and Trabb's boy had
seen me passing from Miss Havisham's, in the direction of my din-
ing-place. Thus, Trabb's boy became their guide, and with him
they went out to the sluice-house ; though by the town way to the
marshes, which I had avoided. Now, as they went along, Herbert
reflected, that I might, after all, have been brought there on some
genuine and serviceable errand tending to Provis's safety, and be-
thinking himself that in that case interruption might be mischie-
vous, left his guide and Startop on the edge of the quarry, and went
on by himself, and stole round the house two or three times, en-
deavouring to ascertain whether all was right within. As he could
hear nothing but indistinct sounds of one deep rough voice (this
was while my mind was so busy), he even at last began to doubt
whether I was there, when suddenly I cried out loudly, and he an-
swered the cries, and rushed in, closely followed by the other two.
When I told Herbert what had passed within the house, he was
for our immediately going before a magistrate in the town, late at
night as it was, and getting out a warrant. But I had already con-

420 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

sidered that such a course, by detaining us there, or binding us to
come back, might be fatal to Provis. There was no gainsaying
this difficulty, and we relinquished all thoughts of pursuing Or-
lick at that time. For the present, under the circumstances, we
deemed it prudent to make rather light of the matter to Trabb's
boy; who I am convinced would have been much affected by dis-
appointment, if he had known that his intervention saved me from
the limekiln. Not that Trabb's boy was of a malignant nature, but
that he had too much spare vivacity, and that it was in his con-
stitution to want variety and excitement at anybody's expense.
When we parted, I presented him with two guineas (which seemed
to meet his views), and told him that I was sorry ever to have had
an ill opinion of him (which made no impression on him at all).

Wednesday being so close upon us, we determined to go back
to London that night, three in the post-chaise ; the rather, as we
should then be clear away, before the night's adventura began to
be talked of. Herbert got a large bottle of stuff for my arm, and
by dint of having this stuff dropped over it all the night through,
I was just able to bear its pain on the journey. It was daylight
when we reached the Temple, and I went at once to bed, and lay
in bed all day.

My terror, as I lay there, of falling ill and being unfitted for to-
morrow, was so besetting, that I wonder it did not disable me of
itself. It would have done so, pretty surely, in conjunction with i
the mental wear and tear I had suffered, but for the unnatural ^
strain upon me that to-morrow was. So anxiously looked forward ;
to, charged with such consequences, its results so impenetrably ]
hidden though so near. '

No precaution could have been more obvious than our refrain-
ing from communication with him that day; yet this again in- ;
creased my restlessness. I started at every footstep and every |
sound, believing that he was discovered and taken, and this was I
the messenger to tell me so. I persuaded myself that I knew he J
was taken; that there was something more upon my mind than a ^
fear or a presentiment; that the fact had occurred, and I had a
mysterious knowledge of it. As the day wore on and no ill news
came, as the day closed in and darkness fell, my overshadowing

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 421

dread of being disabled by illness before tomorrow morning, al-
together mastered me. My burning arm throbbed, and my burn-
ing head throbbed, and I fancied I was beginning to wander. I
counted up to high numbers, to make sure of myself, and repeated
passages that I knew in prose and verse. It happened sometimes
that in the mere escape of a fatigued mind, I dozed for some mo-
ments or forgot ; then I would say to myself with a start, 'Now it
has come, and I am turning dehriousl'

They kept me very quiet all day, and kept my arm constantly
dressed, and gave me cooling drinks. Whenever I fell asleep, I
awoke with the notion I had had in the sluice-house, that a long
time had elapsed and the opportunity to save him was gone.
About midnight I got out of bed and went to Herbert, with the
conviction that I had been asleep for four-and-twenty hours, and
that Wednesday was past. It was the last self-exhausting effort of
my fretfulness, for after that, I slept soundly.

Wednesday morning was dawning when I looked out of the win-
dow. The winking lights upon the bridges were already pale, the
coming sun was like a marsh of fire on the horizon. The river,
still dark and mysterious, was spanned by bridges that were turn-
ing coldly grey, with here and there at a top a warm touch from
the burning in the sky. As I looked along the clustered roofs, with
church towers and spires shooting into the unusually clear air, the
sun rose up. and a veil seemed to be drawn from the river, and
millions of sparkles burst out upon its waters. From me, too, a
veil seemed to be drawn, and I felt strong and well.

Herbert lay asleep in his bed, and our old fellow-student lay
asleep on the sofa. I could not dress myself without help, but I
made up the fire which was still burning, and got some coffee ready
for them. In good time they too started up strong and well, and we
admitted the sharp morning air at the windows, and looked at the
tide that was still flowing towards us.

When it turns at nine o'clock,' said Herbert, cheerfully, 'look
out for us, and stand ready, you over there at Mill Pond Bank ! '

422 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

CHAPTER LIV

It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the
wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the
shade. We had our pea-coats with us, and I took a bag. Of all my
worldly possessions I took no more than the few necessaries that
filled the bag. Where I might go, what I might do, or when I might
return, were questions utterly unknown to me; nor did I vex my
mind with them, for it was wholly set on Provis's safety. I only
wondered for the passing moment, as I stopped at the door and
looked back, under what altered circumstances I should next see
those rooms, if ever.

We loitered down to the Temple stairs, and stood loitering there,'
as if we were not quite decided to go upon the water at all. Of
course I had taken care that the boat should be ready, and every-
thing in order. After a little show of indecision, which there were
none to see but the two or three amphibious creatures belonging
to our Temple stairs, we went on board and cast off; Herbert in
the bow, I steering. It was then about high-water — half-past eight.

Our plan was this. The tide, beginning to run down at nine,
and being with us until three, we intended still to creep on after it
had turned, and row against it until dark. We should then be well
in those long reaches below Gravesend, between Kent and Essex,
where the river is broad and solitary, where the water-side inhab-
itants are very few, and where lone public-houses are scattered
here and there, of which we could choose one for a resting-place.
There, we meant to lie by, all night. The steamer for Hamburg,
and the steamer for Rotterdam, would start from London at about
nine on Thursday morning. We should know at what time to ex-
pect them, according to where we were, and would hail the first;
so that if by any accident we were not taken aboard, we should
have another chance. We knew the distinguishing marks' of each
vessel.

The relief of being at last engaged in the execution of the pur-
pose, was so great to me that I felt it difficult to realise the condi-

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 423

tion in which I had been in a few hours before. The crisp air, the
sunHght, the movement on the river, and the moving river itself —
the road that ran with us, seeming to sympathise with us, anim-
ate us, and encourage us on — freshened me with new hope. I felt
mortified to be of so little use in the boat; but there were few
better oarsmen than my two friends, and they rowed with a steady
stroke that was to last all day.

At that time, the steam-traffic on the Thames was far below its
present extent, and waterman's boats were far more numerous. Of
barges, sailing colliers, and coasting traders, there were perhaps as
many as now; but, of steam-ships, great and small, not a tithe or
a twentieth part so many. Early as it was, there were plenty of
scullers going here and there that morning, and plenty of barges
dropping down with the tide ; the navigation of the river between
bridges, in an open boat, was a much easier and commoner matter
in those days than it is in these ; and we went ahead among many
skiffs and wherries, briskly.

Old London Bridge was soon passed, and old Billingsgate mar-
ket with its oyster-boats and Dutchmen, and the White Tower and
Traitor's Gate, and we were in among the tiers of shipping. Here,
were the Leith, Aberdeen, and Glasgow steamers, loading and un-
loading goods, and looking immensely high out of the water as we
passed alongside; here, were colliers by the score and score, with
coal-whippers plunging off stages on Deck, as counterweights to
measures of coal swinging up, which were then rattled over the
side into barges; here, at her moorings, was to-morrow's steamer
for Rotterdam, of which we took good notice: and here to-mor-
row's for Hamburg, under whose bowsprit we crossed. And now,
I sitting in the stern, could see with a faster beating heart. Mill
Pond Bank and Mill Pond Stairs.

'Is he there?' said Herbert.

'Not yet.'

'Right!, He was not to come down till he saw us. Can you see
his signal?'

'Not well from here; but I think I see it. — Now I see him! Pull
both. Easy, Herbert. Oars!'

We touched the stairs lightly for a single moment, and he was

424 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

on board and we were off again. He had a boatcloak with him,
and a black canvas bag, and he looked as like a river-pilot as my
heart could have wished.

'Dear boy! ' he said, putting his arm on my shoulder, as he took i
his seat. 'Faithful dear boy, well done. Thankye, thankye!' 1

Again among the tiers of shipping, in and out, avoiding rusty j
chain-cables, frayed hempen hawsers, and bobbing buoys sinking I
for the moment floating broken baskets, scattering floating chips |
of wood and shaving, cleaving floating scum of coal, in and out,
under the figure-head of the John of Sunderland making a speech '
to the winds (as is done by many Johns), and the Betsy of Yar- -
mouth with a firm formality of bosom and her nobby eyes starting »
two inches out of her head; in and out, hammers going in ship-
builders' yards, saws going at timber, clashing engines going at
things unknown, pumps going in leaky ships, capstans going, ships
going out to sea, and unintelligible sea-creatures roaring curses
over the bulwarks at respondent lightermen; in and out — out at
last upon the clearer river, where the ships' boys might take their
fenders in, no longer fishing in troubled waters with them over
the side, and where the festooned sails might fly out to the wind.

At the Stairs where we had taken him aboard, and ever since, I
had looked warily for any token of our being suspected. I had
seen none. We certainly had not been, and at that time as certain-
ly we were not, either attended or followed by any boat. If we
had been waited on by any boat, I should have run in to shore, and
have obliged her to go on, or to make her purpose evident. But,
we held our own, without any appearance of molestation.

He had his boat-cloak on him, and looked, as I have said, a nat-
ural part of the scene. It was remarkable (but perhaps the
wretched life he had led accounted for it), that he was the least
anxious of any of us. He was not indifferent, for he told me that
he hoped to live to see his gentleman one of the best of gentlemen
in a foreign country; he was not disposed to be passive or re-
signed, as I understood it ; but he had no notion of meeting dangei
half way. When it came upon him, he confronted it, but it miist
come before he troubled himself.

'If you knowed, dear boy,' he said to me, 'what it is to .sit ber

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 425

alonger my dear boy and have my smoke, arter having been day
by day betwixt four walls, you'd envy me. But you don't know
what it is.'

'I think I know the delights of freedom,' I answered.

'Ah,' said he, shaking his head gravely. 'But you don't know
it equal to me. You must have been under lock and key, dear boy,
to know it equal to me — but I ain't a-going to be low.'

I It occurred to me as inconsistent, that for any mastering idea,
he should have endangered his freedom and even his life. But I re-
flected that perhaps freedom without danger was too much apart
from all the habit of his existence to be to him what it would be t()
another man. I was not far out, since he said, after smoking a
little:

'You see, dear boy, when I was over yonder, t'other side the
world, I was always a looking to this side; and it come flat to be
there, for all I was a growing rich. Everybody knowed Magwitch,
and Magwitch could come, and Magwitch could go, and nobody's
head would be troubled about him. They ain't so easy concerning
me here, dear boy — wouldn't be, leastwise, if they knowed where
I was.'

'If all goes well,' said I, 'you will be perfectly free and safe
again, within a few hours.'

'Well,' he returned, drawing a long breath, 'I hope so.'

'And think so?'

He dipped his hand in the water over the boat's gunwale, and
said, smiling with that softened air upon him which was not new
to me:

'Ay, I s'pose I think so, dear boy. We'd be puzzled to be more
quiet and easy-going than we are at present. But — it's a flowing
so soft and pleasant through the water, p'raps, as makes me think
it — I was a thinking through my smoke just then, that we can no
more see to the bottom of the next few hours, than we can see to
the bottom of this river what I catches hold of. Nor yet we can't
no more hold their tide than I can hold this. And it's run through
my fingers and gone, you see! ' holding up his dripping hand.

'But for your face, I should think you were a little despondent,'
said I.

426 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

'Not a bit on it, dear boy! It comes of flowing on so quiet, and
of that there rippling at the boat's head making a sort of a Sunday
tune. Maybe I'm a growing a trifle old besides.'

He put his pipe back in his mouth with an undisturbed expres-
sion of face, and sat as composed and contented as if we were al-
ready out of England. Yet he was as submissive to a word of ad-
vice as if he had been in constant terror, for, when we ran ashore
to get some bottles of beer into the boat, and he was stepping out,
I hinted that I thought he would be safest where he was, and he
said, 'Do you, dear boy?' and quietly sat down again.

The air felt cold upon the river, but it was a bright day, and the
sunshine was very cheering. The tide ran strong, I took care to
lose none of it, and our steady stroke carried us on thoroughly
well. By imperceptible degrees, as the tide ran out, we lost more
and more of the nearer woods and hills, and dropped lower and
lower between the muddy banks, but the tide was yet with us when
we were off Gravesend. As our charge was wrapped in his cloak, I
purposely passed within a boat or two's length of the floating Cus-
tom House, and so out to catch the stream, alongside of two emi-
grant ships, and under the bows of a large transport with troops on
the forecastle looking down at us. And soon the tide began to
slacken, and the craft lying at anchor to swing, and presently they
had all swung round, and the ships that were taking advantage of
the new tide to get up to the Pool, began to crowd upon us in a
fleet, and we kept under the shore, as much out of the strength of
the tide now as we could, standing carefully off from low shallows 5
and mud-banks.

Our oarsmen were so fresh, by dint of having occasionally let
her drive with the tide for a minute or two, that a quarter of an
hour's rest proved full as much as they wanted. We got ashore ;
among some slippery stones while we ate and drank what we had ,
with us, and looked about. It was like my own marsh country, flat
and monotonous, and with a dim horizon; while the winding river
turned and turned, and the great floating buoys upon it turned and
turned, and everything else seemed stranded and still. For, now,
the last of the fleet of ships was round the last low point we had

I
i

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 427

headed; and the last green barge, straw-laden, with a brown sail,
had followed; and some ballast-lighters, shaped like a child's first
rude imitation of a boat, lay low in the mud; and a little squat
shoal-lighthouse on open piles, stood crippled in the mud on stilts
and crutches; and slimy stakes stuck out of the mud, and slimy
stones stuck out of the mud, and red landmarks and tidemarks
stuck out of the mud, and an old landing-stage and an old roofless
building slipped into the mud, and all about us was stagnation and
mud.

We pushed off again, and made what way we could. It was
much harder work now, but Herbert and Startop persevered, and
rowed, and rowed, and rowed, until the sun went down. By that
time the river had lifted us a little, so that we could see above the
bank. There was the red sun, on the low level of the shore, in a
purple haze, fast deepening into black; and there was the solitary
flat marsh; and far away there were the rising grounds, between
which and us there seemed to be no life, save here and there in
the foreground a melancholy gull.

As the night was fast falling, and as the moon, being past the
full, would not rise early, we held a little council: a short one, for
clearly our course was to lie by at the first lonely tavern we could
find. So, they plied their oars once more, and I looked out for any-
thing like a house. Thus we held on, speaking little, for four or five
dull miles. It was very cold, and a collier coming by us, with her
galley-fire smoking and flaring, looked like a comfortable home.
The night was dark by this time as it would be until morning;
what light we had, seemed to come more from the river than the
sky, as the oars in their dipping struck at a few reflected stars.

At this dismal time we were evidently all possessed by the idea
that we were followed. As the tide made, it flapped heavily at ir-
regular intervals against the shore; and whenever such a sound
came, one or other of us was sure to start and look in that direc-
tion. Here and there, the set of the current had worn down the
bank into a little creek, and we were all suspicious of such places,
and eyed them nervously. Sometimes, 'What was that ripple?' one
of us would say in a low voice. Or another, 'Is that a boat yonder?'

428 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

And afterwards, we would fall into a dead silence, and I would sit
impatiently thinking with what an unusual amount of noise the
oars worked in the thowels.

At length we descried a light and a roof, and presently after-
wards ran alongside a little causeway made of stones that had been
picked up hard by. Leaving the rest in the boat, I stepped ashore,
and found the light to be in the window of a public-house. It was
a dirty place enough, and I dare say not unknown to smuggling
adventurers; but there was a good fire in the kitchen, and there
were eggs and bacon to eat, and various liquors to drink. Also,
there were two double-bedded rooms — 'such as they were,' the
landlord said. No other company was in the house than the land-
lord, his wife, and a grizzled male creature, the 'Jack' of the little
causeway, who was as slimy and smeary as if he had been low
water-mark too.

With this assistant, I went down to the boat again, and we all
came ashore, and brought out the oars, and rudder, and boat-hook,
and all else, and hauled her up for the night. We made a very good
meal by the kitchen fire, and then apportioned the bedrooms:
Herbert and Startop were to occupy one; I and our charge the
other. We found the air as carefully excluded from both as if air
were fatal to life; and there were more dirty clothes and bandboxes
under the beds, than I should have thought the family possessed.
But, we considered ourselves well off, notwithstanding, for a more
solitary place we could not have found.

While we were comforting ourselves by the fire after our meal,
the Jack — who was sitting in a corner, and who had a bloated pair
of shoes on, which he had exhibited while we were eating our eggs
and bacon, as interesting relics that he had taken a few days ago
from the feet of a drowned seaman washed ashore — asked me if
we had seen a four-oared galley going up with the tide? When I
told him No, he said she must have gone down then, and yet she
'took up too,' when she left there.

They must ha' thought better on 't for some reason or another,'
said the Jack, 'and gone down.'

'A four-oared galley did you say?' said I.

'A four,' said the Jack, 'and two sitters.'

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 429

'Did they come ashore here?'

'They put in with a stone two-gallon jar, for some beer. I'd ha'
been glad to pison the beer myself,' said the Jack, 'or put some
rattling physic in it.'

Why?'

7 know why,' said the Jack. He spoke in a slushy voice, as if
much mud had washed into his throat.

'He thinks,' said the landlord: a weakly meditative man with a
pale eye, who seemed to rely greatly on his Jack: 'he thinks they
was, what they wasn't.'

7 knows what I thinks,' observed the Jack.

'You thinks Custom 'Us, Jack?' said the landlord.

'I do,' said the Jack.

'Then you're wrong, Jack.'

'Am I!'

In the infinite meaning of his reply and his boundless confidence
in his views, the Jack took one of his bloated shoes off, looked into
it, knocked a few stones out of it on the kitchen floor, and put it on
again. He did this with the air of a Jack who was so right that he
could afford to do anything.

'Why, what do you make out that they done with their buttons,
then, Jack?' asked the landloard, vacilating weakly.

'Done with their buttons?' return the Jack. 'Chucked 'em over-
board. Swallered 'em. Soweu 'em, to come up small salad. Done
with their buttons ! '

'Don't be cheeky. Jack,' remonstrated the landlord, in a melan-
choly and pathetic way.

'A Custom 'Us officer knows what to do with his Buttons,' said
the Jack, repeating the obnoxious word with the greatest con-
tempt, 'when they comes betwixt him and his own light. A Four
and two sitters don't go hanging and hovering, up with one tide
and down with another, and both with and against another, with-
out there being Custom 'Us at the bottom of it.' Saying which he
went out in disdain; and the landlord, having no one to rely upon,
found it impracticable to pursue the subject.

This dialogue made us all uneasy, and me very uneasy. The
dismal wind was muttering round the house, the tide was flapping

430 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

at the shore, and I had a feeling that we were caged and threat-
ened. A four-oared galley hovering about in so unusual a way as
to attract this notice, was an ugly circumstance that I could not get
rid of. When I had induced Provis to go up to bed, I went outside
with my two companions (Startop by this time knew the state of
the case), and held another council. Whether we should remain at
the house until near the steamer's time, which would be about one
in the afternoon; or whether we should put off early in the morn-
ing; was the question we discussed. On the whole we deemed it
the better course to lie where we were, until within an hour or so
of the steamer's time, and then to get out in her track, and drift
easily with the tide. Having settled to do this, we returned into
the house and went to bed.

I lay down with the greater part of my clothes on, and slept well
for a few hours. When I awoke, the wind had risen, and the sign
of the house (the Ship) was creaking and banging about, with
noises that startled me. Rising softly, for my charge lay fast
asleep, I looked out of the window. It commanded the causeway
where we had hauled up our boat, and, as my eyes adapted them-
selves to the light of the clouded moon, I saw two men looking into
her. They passed by under the window, looking at nothing else,
and they did not go down to the landing-place which I could dis-
cern to be empty, but struck across the marsh in the direction of
the Nore.

My first impulse was to call up Herbert, and show him the two
men going away. But, reflecting before I got into his room, which
was at the bacK of the house and adjoined mine, that he and Star-
top had had a harder day than I, and were fatgiued, I forebore.
Going back to my window I could see the two men moving over
the marsh. In that light, however, I soon lost them, and feeling
very cold, lay down to think of the matter, and fell asleep again.

We were up early. As we walked to and fro, all four together,
before breakfast, I deemed it right to recount what I had seen.
Again our charge was the least anxious of the party. It was very
likely that the men belonged to the Custom House, he said very
quietly, and that they had no thought of us. I tried to persuade
myself that it was so — as, indeed, it might easily be. However, I

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 431

proposed that he and I should walk away together to a distant
point we could see, and that the boat should take us aboard there,
or as near there as might prove feasible, at about noon. This being
considered a good precaution, soon after breakfast he and I set
•forth, without saying anything at the tavern.

He smoked his pipe as we went along, and sometimes stopped to
clap me on the shoulder. One would have supposed that it was I
who was in danger, not he, and that he was reassuring me. We
spoke very little. As we approached the point, I begged him to
remain in a sheltered place, while I went on to reconnoitre; for it
was towards it that the men had passed in the night. He complied,
and I went on alone. There was no boat off the point, nor any boat
drawn up anywhere near it, nor were there any signs of the men
having embarked there. But, to be sure the tide was high, and
there might have been some footprints under water.

When he looked out from his shelter in the distance, and saw
that I waved my hat to him to come up, he rejoined me, and there
we waited ; sometimes lying on the bank wrapped in our coats, and
sometimes moving about to warm ourselves : until we saw our boat
coming round. We got aboard easily, and rowed out into the track
of the steamer. By that time it wanted but ten minutes of one
o'clock, and we began to look for her smoke.

But, it was half-past one before we saw her smoke, and soon
after we saw behind it the smoke of another steamer. As they were
coming on at full speed, we got the two bags ready, and took that
opportunity of saying good-bye to Herbert and Startop. W^e had
all shaken hands cordially, and neither Herbert's eyes nor mine
were quite dry, when I saw a four-oared galley shoot out from
under the bank but a little way ahead of us, and row out into the
same track.

A stretch of shore had been as yet between us and the steamer's
smoke, by reason of the bend and wind of the river; but now she
was visible coming head on. I called to Herbert and Startop to
keep before the tide, that she might see us lying by for her, and
adjured Provis to sit quite still, wrapped in his cloak. He answered
cheerily, 'Trust to me, dear boy,' and sat like a statue. Meantime
the galley, which was skilfully handled, had crossed us, let us come

432 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

up with her, and fallen alongside. Leaving just room enough for
the play of the oars, she kept alongside, drifting when we drifted,
and pulling a stroke or two when we pulled. Of the two sitters, one
held the rudder lines, and looked at us attentively — as did all the
rowers ; the other sitter was wrapped up, much as Provis was, and
seemed to shrink, and whisper some instruction to the steerer as
he looked at us. Not a word was spoken in either boat.

Startop could make out, after a few minutes, which steamer was
first, and gave me the word 'Hamburg' in a low voice as we sat
face to face. She was nearing us very fast, and the beating of her
paddles grew louder and louder. I felt as if her shadow were ab-
solutely upon us, when the galley hailed us. I answered.

^You have a returned transport there,' said the man who held
the lines. 'That's the man, wrapped in the cloak. His name is
Abel Magwitch, otherwise Provis. I apprehend that man, and call
upon him to surrender, and you to assist.'

At the same moment, without giving any audible direction to his
crew, he ran the galley aboard of us. They had pulled one sudden
stroke ahead, had got their oars in, had run athwart us, and were
holding on to our gunwale, before we knew what they were doing.
This caused great confusion on board of the steamer, and I heard,;
them calling to us, and heard the order given to stop the paddlesJ
and heard them stop, but felt her driving down upon us irresistibly.]
In the same moment, I saw the steersman of the galley lay his hand*!
on his prisoner's shoulder, and saw that both boats were swinging
round with the force of the tide, and saw that all hands on board '
the steamer were running forward quite frantically. Still in the
same moment, I saw the prisoner start up, lean across his captor,
and pull the cloak from the neck of the shrinking sitter in the gal-
ley. Still in the same moment, I saw that the face disclosed, waSj
the face of the other convict of long ago. Still in the same mom-j
ent, I saw the face tilt backward with a white terror on it that IJ'
shall never forget, and heard a great cry on board the steamer and;:
a loud splash in the water, and felt the boat iink from under me.j

It was but for an instant that I seemed to struggle with a thou4
sand mill-weirs and a thousand flashes of light; that instant pastj
I was taken on board the galley. Herbert was there, and Startop-

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 433

was there ; but our boat was gone, and the two convicts were gone.

What with the cries aboard the steamer, and the furious blowing
off of her steam, and her driving on, and our driving on, I could
not at first distinguish sky from water or shore from shore ; but the
crew of the galley righted her with great speed, and, pulling certain
swift strong strokes ahead, lay upon their oars, every man looking
silently and eagerly at the water astern. Presently a dark object
was seen in it, bearing towards us on the tide. No man spoke, but
the steersman held up his hand, and all softly backed water, and
kept the boat straight and true before it. As it came nearer, I saw
it to be Magwitch, swimming, but not swimming freely. He was
taken on board, and instantly manacled at the wrists and ankles.

The galley was kept steady, and the silent eager look-out at the
water was resumed. But the Rotterdam steamer now came up,
and apparently not understanding what had happened, came on at
speed. By the time she had been hailed and stopped, both steam-
ers were drifting away from us, and we were rising and falling in a
troubled wake of water. The look-out was kept, long after all was
still again and the two steamers were gone; but everybody knew
that it was hopeless now.

At length we gave it up, and pulled under the shore towards the
tavern we had lately left, where we were received with no little sur-
prise. Here, I was able to get some comforts for Magwitch — Pro-
vis no longer — who had received some very severe injury in the
chest and a deep cut in the head.

He told me that he believed himself to have gone under the keel
of the steamer, and to have been struck on the head in rising. The
injury to his chest (which rendered his breathing extremely pain-
ful) he thought he had received against the side of the galley. He
added that he did not pretend to say what he might or might not
have done to Compeyson, but, that in the moment of his laying his
hand on his cloak to identify him, that villain had staggered up
and staggered back, and they had both gone overboard together;
when the sudden wrenching of him (Magwitch) out of our boat^
and the endeavour of his captor to keep him in it, had capsized us.
He told me in a whisper that they had gone down, fiercely locked
in each other's arms, and that there had been a struggle under

434 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

water, and that he had disengaged himself, struck out, and swam
away.

I never had any reason to doubt the exact truth of what he had
told me. The officer who steered the galley gave the same account
of their going overboard.

When I asked this officer's permission to change the prisoner's
wet clothes by purchasing any spare garments I could get at the
public-house, he gave it readily: merely observing that he must
take charge of everything his prisoner had about him. So the
pocket-book which had once been in my hands, passed into the
officer's. He further gave me leave to accompany the prisoner to
London ; but, declined to accord that grace to my two friends.

The Jack at the Ship was instructed where the drowned man had
gone down, and undertook to search for the body in the places
where it was likeliest to come ashore. His interest in its recovery
seemed to me to be much heightened when he heard that it had
stockings on. Probably, it took about a dozen drowned men to fit
him out completely; and that may have been the reason why the
different articles of his dress were in various stages of decay.

We remained at the public-house until the tide turned, and then
Magwitch was carried down to the galley and put on board. Her-
bert and Startop were to get to London by land, as soon as they
could. We had a doleful parting, and when I took my place by
Magwitch 's side, I felt that that was my place henceforth while
he lived.

For now my repugnance to him had all melted away, and in the
hunted wounded shackled creature who held my hand in his, I only
saw a man who had meant to be my benefactor, and who had felt
affectionately, gratefully, and generously, towards me with great
constancy through a series of years. I only saw in him a much
better man than I had been to Joe.

His breathing became more difficult and painful as the night
drew on, and often he could not repress a groan. I tried to rest
him on the arm I could use, in any easy position ; but it was dread-
ful to think that I could not be sorry at heart for his being badly
hurt, since it was unquestionably best that he should die. That
there were, still living, people enough who were able and willing

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 435

to identify him, I could not doubt. That he would be leniently
treated, I could not hope. He who had been presented in the worst
light at his trial, who had since broken prison and been tried again,
who had returned from transportation under a life sentence, and
who had occasioned the death of the man who was the cause of his
arrest.

As we returned towards the setting sun we had yesterday left
behind us, and as the stream of our hopes seemed all running back,
I told him how grieved I was to think he had come home for my
sake.

'Dear boy,' he answered, T'm quite content to take my chance.
I've seen my boy, and he can be a gentleman without me.'

No. I had thought about that while we had been there side by
side. No. Apart from any inclinations of my own, I understand
Wemmick's hint now. I foresaw that, being convicted, his posses-
sions would be forfeited to the Crown.

'Look'ee here, dear boy,' said he. 'It's best as a gentleman
should not be knowed to belong to me now. Only come to see me
as if you come by chance alonger Wemmick. Sit where I can see
you when I am swore to, for the last o' many times, and I don't ask
no more.'

'I will never stir from your side,' said I, 'when I am suffered to
be near you. Please God, I will be as true to you as you have been
to me ! '

I felt his hand tremble as it held mine, and he turned his face
away as he lay in the bottom of the boat, and I heard that old sound
in his throat — softened now, like all the rest of him. It was a good
thing that he had touched this point, for it put into my mind what
I might not otherwise have thought of until too late: that he need
never know how his hopes of enriching me had perished.

CHAPTER LV

He was taken to the Police Court next day, and would have been
immediately committed for trial, but that it was necessary to send
down for an old officer of the prison-ship from which he had once

436 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

escaped, to speak to his identity. Nobody doubted it; but, Com-
peyson, who had meant to depose to it, was tumbling on the tides,
dead, and it happened that there was not at that time any prison
officer in London who could give the required evidence. I had gone
direct to Mr. Jaggers at his private house, on my arrival over-
night, to retain his assistance, and Mr. Jaggers on the prisoner's
behalf would admit nothing. It was the sole resource, for he told
me that the case must be over in five minutes when the witness was
there, and that no power on earth could prevent its going against
us.

I imparted to Mr. Jaggers my design of keeping him in ignor-
ance of the fate of his wealth. Mr. Jaggers was querulous and an-
gry with me for having 'let it slip through my fingers,' and said we
must memorialise by and by, and try at all events for some of it.
But he did not conceal from me that although there might be many
cases in which forfeiture would not be exacted, there were no cir- i
cumstances in this case to make it one of them. I understood that
very well. I was not related to the outlaw, or connected with him
by any recognisable tie ; he had put his hand to no writing or set-
tlement in my favour before his apprehension, and to do so now ■
would be idle. I had no claim, and I finally resolved, and ever|
afterwards abided by the resolution, that my heart should never be j
sickened with the hopeless task of attempting to establish one. 5

There appeared to be reason for supposing that the drowned in- f
former had hoped for a reward out of this forfeiture, and had ob-
tained some accurate knowledge of Magwitch's affairs. When his
body was found, many miles from the scene of his death, and so
horribly disfigured that he was only recognisable by the contents
of his pockets, notes were still legible, folded in a case he carried.
Among these were the name of a banking house in New South
Wales where a sum of money was, and the designation of certain j
lands of considerable value. Both those heads of information werej
in a list that Magwitch, while in prison, gave to Mr. Jaggers, off
the possessions he supposed I should inherit. His ignorance, poor j
fellow, at last served him ; he never mistrusted but that my inheri- '
tance was quite safe, with Mr. Jaggers's aid.

After three days' delay, during which the crown prosecution

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 437

stood over for the production of the witness from the prison-ship,
the witness came, and completed the easy case. He was com-
mitted to take his trial at the next Sessions, which would come on
in a month.

It was at this dark time of my life that Herbert returned home
one evening, a good deal cast down, and said:

'My dear Handel, I fear I shall soon have to leave you.'

His partner having prepared me for that, I was less surprised
than he thought.

'We shall lose a fine opportunity if I put off going to Cairo, and
I am very much afraid I must go, Handel, when you most need
me.'

'Herbert, I shall always need you, because I shall always love
you ; but my need is no greater now, than at another time.'

'You will be so lonely.'

'I have not leisure to think of that,' said I. 'You know that I
am always with him to the full extent of the time allowed, and
that I should be with him all day long, if I could. And when I
come away from him, you know that my thoughts are with him.'

The dreadful condition to which he was brought, was so ap-
palling to both of us, that we could not refer to it in plainer words.

'My dear fellow,' said Herbert, 'let the near prospect of oui
separation — for, it is very near — be my justification for troubling
you about yourself. Have you thought of your future?'

'No, for I have been afraid to think of any future.'

'But yours cannot be dismissed; indeed, my dear, dear Handel,
it must not be dismissed. I wish you would enter on it now, as far
as a few friendly words go, with me.'

'I will,' said I.

'In this branch house of ours, Handel, we must have a '

I saw that his delicacy was avoiding the right word, so I said,
'A clerk.'

'A clerk. And I hope it is not at all unlikely that he may ex-
pand (as a clerk of your acquaintance has expanded) into a part-
ner. Now, Handel — in short, my dear boy, will you come to me?'

There was something charmingly cordial and engaging in the
manner in which after saying, 'Now, Handel,' as if it were the

438 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

grave beginning of a portentous business exordium, he had sud-
denly given up that tone, stretched out his honest hand, and
spoken like a school-boy.

'Clara and I have talked about it again and again,' Herbert
pursued, 'and the dear little thing begged me only this evening,
with tears in her eyes, to say to you that if you will live with us
when we come together, she will do her best to make you happ}^,
and to convince her husband's friend that he is her friend too. We
should get on so well, Handel!'

I thanked her heartily, and I thanked him heartily, but said I
could not yet make sure of joining him as he so kindly offered.
Firstly, my mind was too preoccupied to be able to take in the
subject clearly. Secondly — Yes! Secondly, there was a vague
something lingering in my thoughts that will come out very near
the end of this slight narrative.

'But if you thought, Herbert, that you could, without doing any
injury to your business, leave the question open for a little
while '

'For any while,' cried Herbert. 'Six months, a year!'

'Not so long as that,' said I. 'Two or three months at most.'

Herbert was highly delighted when we shook hands on this ar-
rangement, and said he could now take courage to tell me that he
believed he must go away at the end of the week.

'And Clara?' said I.

'The dear little thing,' returned Herbert, 'holds dutifully to her
father as long as he lasts; but he won't last long. Mrs. Whimple
confides to me that he is certainly going.'

'Not to say an unfeeling thing,' said I, 'he cannot do better
than go.'

'I am afraid that must be admitted,' said Herbert: 'and then I
shall come back for the dear little thing, and the dear little thing
and I will walk quietly into the nearest church. Remember! The
blessed darling comes of no family, my dear Handel, and never
looked into the red book, and hasn't a notion about her grand-
papa. What a fortune for the son of my mother!'

On the Saturday in that same week, I took my leave of Her-
bert — full of bright hope, but sad and sorry to leave me — as he

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 439

sat on one of the seaport mail coaches. I went into a coffee-house
I J to write a little note to Clara, telling her he had gone off, sending
his love to her over and over again, and then went to my lonely
home — if it deserved the name, for it was now no home to me,
and I had no home anywhere.

On the stairs I encountered Wemmick, who was coming dovv^n,
after an unsuccessful application of his knuckles to my door. I
had not seen him alone, since the disastrous issue of the attempted
flight; and he had come, in his private personal capacity, to say
a few words of explanation in reference to that failure.

The late Compeyson,' said Wemmick, 'had by little and little
got at the bottom of half of the regular business now transacted,
and it was from the talk of some of his people in trouble (some
of his people being always in trouble) that I heard what I did. I
kept my ears open, seeming to have them shut, until I heard that
he was absent, and I thought that would be the best time for mak-
ing the attempt. I can only suppose now, that it was a part of his
policy, as a very clever man, habitually to deceive hu own in-
struments. You don't blame me, I hope, Mr. Pip? I'm sure I
tried to serve you, with all my heart.'

'I am as sure of that, Wemmick, as you can be, and I thank
you most earnestly for all your interest and friendship.'

'Thank you, thank you very much. It's a bad job,' said Wem-
mick, scratching his head, 'and I assure you I haven't been so cut
up for a long time. What I look at is, the sacrifice of so much
portable property. Dear me!'

'What / think of, Wemmick, is the poor owner of the property.'

'Yes, to be sure,' said Wemmick. 'Of course there can be no
objection to your being sorry for him, and I'd put down a five-
pound note myself to get him out of it. But what I look at, is
this. The late Compeyson having been beforehand with him in in-
telligence of his return, and being so determined to bring him to
book, I do not think he could have been saved. Whereas, the por-
table property certainly could have been saved. That's the differ-
ence between the property and the owner, don't you see?'

I invited Wemmick to come upstairs, and refresh himself with a
glass of grog before walking to Walworth. He accepted the invita-

UO GREAT EXPECTATIONS

tion. While he was drinking his moderate allowance, he said, with
nothing to lead up to it, and after having appeared rather fidgety:

'What do you think of my meaning to take a holiday on Mon-
day, Mr. Pip?'

'Why, I suppose you have not done such a thing these twelve
months.'

'These twelve years, more likely,' said Wemmick. 'Yes. I'm go-
ing to take a holiday. More than that; I'm going to take a walk.
More than that, I'm going to ask you to take a walk with me.'

I was about to excuse myself, as being but a bad companion
just then, when Wemmick anticipated me.

'I know your engagements,' said he, 'and I know you are out of
sorts, Mr. Pip. But if you could oblige me, I should take it as a
kindness. It ain't a long walk, and it's an early one. Say it might
occupy you (including breakfast on the walk) from eight to
twelve. Couldn't you stretch a point and manage it?'

He had done so much for me at various times, that this was
very little to do for him. I said I could manage it — would manage
it — and he was so very much pleased by my acquiescence, that I
was pleased too. At his particular request, I appointed to call for
him at the Castle at half-past eight on Monday morning, and so
we parted for the time.

Punctual to my appointment, I rang at the Castle gate on the
IMonday morning, and was received by Wemmick himself: who
struck me as looking tighter than usual, and having a sleeker hat
on. Within, there were two glasses of rum-and-milk prepared, and
two biscuits. The Aged must have been stirring with the lark, for,
glancing into the perspective of his bedroom, I observed that his
bed was em^pty.

When we had fortified ourselves with the rum-and-milk and
biscuits, and were going out for the walk with that training prep-
aration on us, I was considerably surprised to see Wemmick take
up a fishing-rod, and put it over his shoulder. 'Why, we are not
going fishing!' said I. 'No,' returned Wemmick, 'but I like to
"svalk with one.'

I thought this odd: however, I said nothing, and we set off

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 441

We went towards Camberwell Green, and when we were there-
abouts, Wemmick said suddenly:

'Halloa! Here's a church!'

There was nothing very surprising in that; but again, I was
rather surprised, when he said, as if he were animated by a bril-
liant idea:

'Let's go in!'

We went in, Wemmick leaving his fishing-rod in the porch, and
looked all round. In the mean time, Wemmick was diving into his
coat-pockets, and getting something out of paper there.

'Halloa!' said he. 'Here's a couple of pair of gloves! Let's put
'em on!'

As the gloves were white kid gloves, and as the post-office was
widened to its utmost extent, I now began to have my strong sus-
picions. They were strengthened into certainty when I beheld the
Aged enter at a side door, escorting a lady.

'Halloa!' said Wemmick. 'Here's Miss Skiffins! Let's have a
wedding.'

That discreet damsel was attired as usual, except that she was
now engaged in substituting for her green kid gloves, a pair of
white. The Aged was likewise occupied in preparing a similar
sacrifice for the altar of Hymen. The old gentleman, however, ex-
perienced so much difficulty in getting his gloves on, that Wem-
mick found it necessary to put him with his back against a pillar,
and then get behind the pillar himself and pull away at them,
while I for m> part held the old gentleman round the waist, that
he might present an equal and safe resistance. By dint of this
ingenious scheme, his gloves were got on to perfection.

The clerk and clergyman then appearing, we were ranged in
order at those fatal rails. True to his notion of seeming to do it
all without preparation, I heard Wemmick say to himself as he
took something out of his waistcoat-pocket before the services
began, 'Halloa ! Here's a ring ! '

I acted in the capacity of backer, or best-man, to the bride-
groom; while a little limp pew-opener in a soft bonnet like a
baby's, made a feint of being the bosom friend of Miss Skiffins.

442 GREAT EXPECTATIONS M

The responsibility of giving the lady away, devolved upon the
Aged, which led to the clergyman's being unintentionally scan-
dalised, and it happened thus. When he said, 'Who giveth this
woman to be married to this man?' the old gentleman, not in the
least knowing what point of the ceremony we had arrived at, stood
most amiably beaming at the ten commandments. JJpon which,
the clergyman said again, 'Who giveth this woman to be married
to this man?' The old gentleman being still in a state of most es-
timable unconsciousness, the bridegroom cried out in his accus-
tomed voice, 'Now Aged P. you know; who giveth?' To which the
Aged replied with great briskness, before saying that he gave, 'All
right, John, all right, my boy!' And the clergyman came to so
gloomy a pause upon it, that I had doubts for the moment whether
we should get completely married that day.

It was completely done, however, and when we were going out
of church, Wemmick took the cover off the font, and put his white
gloves in it, and put the cover on again. Mrs. Wemmick, more
heedful of the future, put her white gloves in her pocket and as-
sumed her green. 'Now, Mr. Pip,' said Wemmick, triumphantly
shouldering the fishing-rod as we came out, 'let me ask you wheth-
er anybody would suppose this to be a wedding-party!'

Breakfast had been ordered at a pleasant little tavern, a mile or
so away upon the rising ground beyond the green; and there was
a bagatelle board in the room, in case we should desire to unbend
our minds after the solemnity. It was pleasant to observe that Mrs.
Wemmick no longer unwound Wemmick's arm when it adapted
itself to her figure, but sat in a high-backed chair against the wall,
like a violin cello in its case, and submitted to be embraced as that
melodious instrument might have done.

We had an excellent breakfast, and when any one declined any-
thing on the table, Wemmick said, 'Provided by contract, you
know; don't be afraid of it!' I drank to the new couple, drank to
the Aged, drank to the Castle, saluted the bride at parting, and
made myself as agreeable as I could.

Wemmick came down to the door with me, and I again shook
hands with him, and wished him joy.

'Thankee!' said Wemmick, rubbing his hands. 'She's such a

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 443

manager of fowls, you have no idea. You shall have some eggs and
judge for yourself. I say, Mr. Pip!' calling me back and speaking
low. 'This is altogether a Walworth sentiment, please.'

T understand. Not to be mentioned in Little Britain,' said I.

Wemmick nodded. After what you let out the other day, Mr.
Jaggers may as well not know it. He might think my brain was
softening, or something of the kind.'

CHAPTER LVI

He lay in prison very ill, during the whole interval between his
committal for trial, and the coming round of the Sessions. He had
broken two ribs, they had wounded one of his lungs, and he
breathed with great pain and difficulty, which increased daily. It
was a consequence of his hurt that he spoke so low as to be scarce-
ly audible; therefore, he spoke very little. But, he was ever ready
to listen to me, and it became the first duty of my life to say to
him, and read to him, what I knew he ought to hear.

Being far too ill to remain in the common prison, he was re-
moved, after the first day or so, into the infirmary. This gave me
opportunities of being with him that I could not otherwise have
had. And but for his illness he would have been put in irons, for he
was regarded as a determined prison-breaker, and I know not what
else.

Although I saw him every day, it was for only a short time;
hence the regularly recurring spaces of our separation were long
enough to record on his face any slight changes that occurred in
his physical state. I do not recollect that I once saw any change
in it for the better; he wasted, and became slowly weaker and
worse, day by day from the day when the prison door closed upon
him.

The kind of submission or resignation that he showed, was that
of a man who was tired out. I sometimes derived an impression,
from his manner or from a whispered word or two which escaped
him. that he pondered over the question whether he might have

444 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

been a better man under better circumstances. But, he never justi-
fied himself by a hint tending that way, or tried to bend the past
out of its eternal shape.

It happened on two or three occasions in my presence, that his
desperate reputation was alluded to by one or other of the people
in attendance on him. A smile crossed his face then, and he turned
his eyes on me with a trustful look, as if he were confident that I
had seen some small redeeming touch in him, even so long ago as
when I was a little child. As to all the rest, he was humble and
contrite, and I never knew him complain.

When the Sessions came round, Mr. Jaggers caused an applica-
tion to be made for the postponement of his trial until the follow-
ing Sessions. It was obviously made with the assurance that he
could not live so long, and was refused. The trial came on at once,
and when he was put to the bar, he was seated in a chair. No ob-
jection was made to my getting close to the dock, on the outside of
it, and holding the hand that he stretched forth to me.

The trial was very short and very clear. Such things as could be
said for him, were said — how he had taken to industrious habits,
and had thriven lawfully and reputably. But, nothing could unsay
the fact that he had returned, and was there in presence of the
Judge and Jury. It was impossible to try him for that, and do
otherwise than find him guilty.

At that time it was the custom (as I learnt from my terrible ex-
perience of that Sessions) to devote a concluding day to the pass-
ing of Sentences, and to make a finishing effect with the Sentence
of Death. But for the indelible picture that my remembrance now
holds before me, I could scarcely believe, even as I write these
words, that I saw two-and-thirty men and women put before the
Judge to receive that sentence together. Foremost among the two-
and-thirty was he; seated, that he might get breath enough to keep
life in him.

The whole scene starts out again in the vivid colours of the mom-
ent, down to the drops of April rain on the windows of the court,
glittering in the rays of April sun. Penned in the dock, as I again
stood outside it at the corner with his hand in mine, were the two-
and-thirty men and women; some defiant, some stricken with

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 445

terror, some sobbing and weeping, some covering their faces, some
staring gloomily about. There had been shrieks from among the
women convicts, but they had been stilled, and a hush had suc-
ceeded. The sheriffs with their great chains and nosegays, other
civic gewgaws and monsters, criers, ushers, a great gallery full of
people — a large theatrical audience — looked on, as the two-and-
thirty and the Judge were solemnly confronted. Then, the Judge
addressed them. Among the wretched creatures before him whom
he must single out for special address, was one who almost from
his infancy had been an offender against the laws; who, after re-
peated imprisonments and punishments, had been at length sen-
tenced to exile for a term of years; and who, under circumstances
of great violence and daring, had made his escape and been re-
sentenced to exile for life. That miserable man would seem for a
time to have become convinced of his errors, when far removed
from the scenes of his old offences, and to have lived a peaceable
and honest life. But in a fatal moment, yielding to those propen-
sities and passions, the indulgence of which had so long rendered
him a scourge to society, he had quitted his haven of rest and re-
pentance, and had come back to the country where he was pro-
scribed. Being here presently denounced, he had for a time suc-
ceeded in evading the officers of Justice, but being at length seized
while in the act of flight, he had resisted them, and had — he best
knew whether by express design, or in the blindness of his hardi-
hood— caused the death of his denouncer, to whom his whole
career was known. The appointed punishment for h!s return to the
land that had cast him out being Death, and his case being this
aggravated case, he must prepare himself to Die.

The sun was striking in at the great windows of the court,
through the glittering drops of rain upon the glass, and it made a
broad shaft of light between the two-and-thirty and the Judge,
linking both together, and perhaps reminding some among the
audience, how both were passing on, with absolute equality, to the
greater Judgment that knoweth all things and cannot err. Rising
for a moment, a distinct speck of face in this way of light, the pris-
oner said, 'My Lord, I have received my sentence of Death from
the x\lmighty, but I bow to yours,' and sat down again. There wsls

446 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

some hushingj and the Judge went on with what he had to say to
the rest. Then, they were all formally doomed, and some of them
were supported out, and some of them sauntered out with a hag-
gard look of bravery, and a few nodded to the gallery, and two or
three shook hands, and others went out chewing the fragments of
herb they had taken from the sweet herbs lying about. He went
last of all, because of having to be helped from his chair and to go
very slowly; and he held my hand while all the others were re-
moved, and while the audience got up (putting their dresses right,
as they might at church or elsewhere) and pointed down at this
criminal or at that, and most of all at him and me.

I earnestly hoped and prayed that he might die before the Re-
corder's Report was made, but, in the dread of his lingering on, I
began that night to write out a petition to the Home Secretary of
State, setting forth my knowledge of him, and how it was that he
had come back for my sake. I wrote it as fervently and patheti-
cally as I could, and when I had finished it and sent it in, I wrote
out other petitions to such men in authority as I hoped were the
most merciful, and drew up one to the Crown itself. For several
days and nights after he was sentenced I took no rest, except when
T fell asleep in my chair, but was wholly absorbed in these appeals.
And after I had sent them in, I could not keep away from the
places where they were, but felt as if they were more hopeful and
less desperate when I was near them. In this unreasonable rest-
lessness and pain of mind, I would roam the streets of an evening,
wandering by those offices and houses where I had left the peti-
tions. To the present hour, the weary western streets of London on
a cold dusty spring night, with their ranges of stern shut-up man-
sions and their long rows of lamps, are melancholy to me from this
association.

The daily visits I could make him were shortened now, and he
was more strictly kept. Seeing, or fancying, that I was suspected
of an intention of carrying poison to him, I asked to be searched
before I sat down at his bedside, and told the officer who was al-
ways there, that I was willing to do anything that would assure
him of the singleness of my designs. Nobody was hard with him or
with me. There was duty to be done, and it was done, but not

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 447

harshly. The officer always gave me the assurance that he was
worse, and some other sick prisoners in the room, and some other
prisoners who attended on them as sick nurses (malefactors, but
not incapable of kindness, God be thanked! ), always joined in the
same report.

As the days went on, I noticed more and more that he would lie
placidly looking at the white ceiling, with an absence of light in
his face, until some, word of mine brightened it for an instant, and
then it would subside again. Sometimes he was almost, or quite,
unable to speak; then, he would answer me with slight pressures
on my hand, and I grew to understand his meaning very well.

The number of the days had risen to ten, when I saw a greater
change in him than I had seen yet. His eyes were turned towards
the door, and lighted up as I entered.

'Dear boy,' he said, as I sat down by his bed: 'I thought you was
late. But I knowed you couldn't be that.'

'It is just the time,' said I. 'I waited for it at the gate.'

'You always waits at the gate; don't you, dear boy?'

'Yes. Not to lose a moment of the time.'

'Thank'ee, dear boy, thank'ee. God bless you! You've never
deserted me, dear boy.'

I pressed his hand in silence, for I could not forget that I had
once meant to desert him.

'And what's the best of all,' he said, 'you've been more comfor-
table alonger me, since I was under a dark cloud, than when the
sun shone. That's best of all.'

He lay on his back, breathing with great difficulty. Do what he
would, and love me though he did, the light left his face ever and
again, and a film came over the placid look at the white ceiling.

'Are you in much pain to-day?'

'I don't complain of none, dear boy.'

'You never do complain.'

He had spoken his last words. He smiled, and I understood his
touch to mean that he wished to lift my hand, and lay it on his
breast. I laid it there, and he smiled again, and put both his hands
upon it.

The allotted time ran out, while we were thus; but, looking

448 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

round, I found the governor of the prison standing near me, and
he whispered, 'You needn't go yet.' I thanked him gratefully, and
asked, 'Might I speak to him, if he can hear me?'

The governor stepped aside, and beckoned the officer away.
The change, though it was made without noise, drew back the film
from the placid look at the white ceiling, and he looked most affec-
tionately at me.

'Dear Magwitch, I must tell you, now at last. You understand
what I say?'

A gentle pressure on my hand.

'You had a child once, whom you loved and lost.'

A stronger pressure on my hand.

'She lived and found powerful friends. She is living now. She
is a lady and very beautiful. And I love her! '

With a last faint effort, which would have been powerless but
for m}^ yielding to it, and assisting it, he raised my hand to his
lips. Then he gently let it sink upon his breast again, with his own
hands lying on it. The placid look at the white ceiling came back,
and passed away, and his head dropped quietly on his breast.

Mindful, then, of what we had read together, I thought of the
two men who went up into the Temple to pray, and I knew there
were no better words that I could say beside his bed, than 'O Lord,
be merciful to him a sinner!'

CHAPTER LVII

Now that I was left wholly to myself I gave notice of my intention
to quit the chambers in the Temple as soon as my tenancy could
legally determine, and in the meanwhile to underlet them. At once
I put bills up in the windows ; for, I was in debt, and had scarcely
any money, and I began to be seriously alarmed by the state of my
affairs. I ought rather to write that I should have been alarmed if
I had had energy and concentration enough to help me to the clear
perception of any truth beyond the fact that I was falling very ill.
The late stress upon me had enabled me to put off illness, but not

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 449

to put it away; I knew that it was coming on me now, and I kn-A
very little else, and was even careless as to that.

For a day or two, I lay on the sofa, or on the floor — anywhe»*e
according as I happened to sink down — with a heavy head and
aching limbs, and no purpose, and no power. Then there came one
night which appeared of great duration, and which teemed with
anxiety and horror; and when in the morning I tried to sit up in
my bed and think of it, I found I could not do so.

Whether I really had been down in Garden Court in the dead of
the night, groping about for the boat that I supposed to be there :
whether I had two or three times come to myself on the staircase
with great terror, not knowing how I had got out of bed; whether
I had found myself lighting the lamp, possessed by the idea lat he
was coming up the stairs, and that the lights were blow: out:
whether I had been inexpressibly harassed by the distracte^ calk-
ing, laughing, and groaning, of some one, and had half sus-^ected
those sounds to be of my own making; whether there had been a
closed iron furnace in a dark corner of the room, and a voice lad
called out over and over again that Miss Havisham was consuming
within it; these were things that I tried to settle with myself and
get into some order, as I lay that morning on my bed. But the
vapour of a limekiln would come between me and them, disorder-
ing them all, and it was through the vapour at last that I saw twc
men looking at me.

'What do you want?' I asked, starting; 'I don't know you.'

'Well, sir,' returned one of them, bending down and touching
me on the shoulder, 'this is a matter that you'll soon arrange, I
dare say, but you're arrested.'

What is the debt?'

'Hundred and twenty-three pound, fifteen, six. Jeweller's ac-
count, I think.'

'What is to be done?'

'You had better come to my house,' said the man. 'I keep a very
nice house.'

I made some attempt to get up and dress myself. When I next
attended to them, they were standing a little off from the bed,
looking at me. I still lay there.

450 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

^You see my state,' said I. 'I would come with you if I could;
but indeed I am quite unable. If you take me from here, I think I
shall die by the way.'

Perhaps they replied, or argued the point, or tried to encourage
me to believe that I was better than I thought. Forasmuch as they
hang in my memory by only this one slender thread, I don't know
what they did, except that they forbore to remove me.

That I had a fever and was avoided, that I suffered greatly, that
I often lost my reason, that the time seemed interminable, that I
confounded impossible existences with my own identity; that I was
a brick in the house wall, and yet entreating to be released from
the giddy place where the builders had sent me; that I was a steel
beam of a vast engine, clashing and whirling over a gulf, and yet
that I implored in my own person to have the engine stopped, and
my part in it hammered off; that I passed through these phases of
disease, I know of my own remembrance, and did in some sort
know at the time. That I sometimes struggled with real people, in
the belief that they were murderers, and that I would all at once
comprehend that they meant to do me good, and would then sink
exhausted in their arms, and suffer them to lay me down, 1 also
knew at the time. But, above all, I knew that there was a constant
tendency in all these people — who, when I was very ill, would pre-
sent all kinds of extraordinary transformations of the human face,
and would be much dilated in size — above all, I say, I knew that
there was an extraordinary tendency in all these people, sooner or
later, to settle down into the likeness of Joe.

After I had turned the worse point of my illness, I began to
notice that while all its other features changed, this one consistent
feature did not change. Whoever came about me, still settled down
into Joe. I opened my eyes in the night, and I saw in the great
chair at the bedside, Joe. I opened my eyes in the day, and, sitting
on the window-seat, smoking his pipe in the shaded open window,
still I saw Joe. I asked for a cooling drink, and the dear hand
that gave it me was Joe's. I sank back on my pillow after drinking,
and the face that looked so hopefully and tenderly upon me was
the face of Joe.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 451

At last, one day, I took courage, and said, ^Is it Joe?'

And the dear old home-voice answered. Which it air, old chap.'

^O Joe, you break my heart! Look angry at me, Joe. Strike me,
Joe. Tell me of my ingratitude. Don't be so good to me!'

For, Joe had actually laid his head down on the pillow at my
side, and put his arm round my neck, in his joy that I knew him.

'Which dear old Pip, old chap,' said Joe, 'you and me was ever
friends. And when you're well enough to go out for a ride — what
larks!'

After which, Joe withdrew to the window, and stood with his
back towards me, wiping his eyes. And as my extreme weakness
prevented me from getting up and going to him, I lay there, pen-
itently whispering, 'O God bless him! O God bless this gentle
Christian man ! '

Joe's eyes were red when I next found him beside me; but, I
was holding his hand and we both felt happy.

'How long, dear Joe?'

'Which you meantersay, Pip, how long have your illness lasted,
dear old chap?'

'Yes, Joe.'

'It's the end of May, Pip. To-morrow is the first of June.'

'And have you been here all the time, dear Joe?'

'Pretty nigh, old chap. For, as I says to Biddy when the news ot
your being ill were brought by letter, which it were brought by
the post, and being formerly single he is now married though un-
derpaid for a deal of walking and shoe-leather, but wealth were
not a object on his part, and marriage were the great wish of his
hart—'

'It is so delightful to hear you, Joe! But I interrupt you in what
you said to Biddy.'

'Which it were,' said Joe, 'that how you might be amongst stran-
gers, and that how you and me having been ever friends, a wisit
at such a moment might not prove unacceptabobble. And Biddy,
her word were, "Go to him, without loss of time." That,' said
Joe, summing up with his judicial air, 'were the word of Biddy.
"Go to him," Biddy say, "without loss of time." In short, I

452 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

shouldn't greatly deceive you,' Joe added, after a little grave re-
ilection, 'if I represented to you that the word of that young wo-
inan were, ''without a minute's loss of time." '

i here Joe cut himself short, and informed me that I was to be
talked to in great moderation, and that I was to take a little nour-
ishment at stated frequent times, whether I felt inclined for it or
not, and that I was to submit myself to all his orders. So, I kissed
his hand, and lay quiet, while he proceeded to indite a note to
Biddy, with my love in it.

Evidently Biddy had taught Joe to write. As I lay in bed look-
ing at him, it made me, in my weak state, cry again with pleasure
to see the pride with which he set about his letter. My bedstead,
divested of its curtains, had been removed, with me upon, it, in-
to the sitting-room, as the airest and largest, and the carpet had
been taken away, and the room kept always fresh and wholesome
night and day. At my own writing-table, pushed into a corner
and cumbered with little bottles, Joe now sat down to his great
work, first choosing a pen from the pen-tray as if it were a chest
of large tools, and tucking up his sleeves as if he were going to
wield a crowbar or sledge-hammer. It was necessary for Joe to
hold on heavily to the table with his left elbow, and to get his right
leg well out behind him, before he could begin, and when he did
begin he made every down-stroke so slowly that it might have been
six feet long, while at every upstroke I could hear his pen splutter-
ing extensively. He had a curious idea that the inkstand was on
the side of him where it was not, and constantly dipped his pen
into space, and seemed quite satisfied with the result. Occasionally,
he was tripped up by some orthographical stumbling-block, but on
the whole he got on very well indeed, and when he had signed his
name, and had removed a finishing blot from the paper to the
crown of his head with his two forefingers, he got up and hovered
about the table, trying the effect of his performance from various
I)oints of view as it lay there, with unbounded satisfaction.

Not to make Joe uneasy by talking too much, even if I had been
able to talk much, I deferred asking him about Miss Havisham un-
til next day. He shook his head when I then asked him if she had
recovered?

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 453

'Is she dead, Joe?'

'Why, you see, old chap,' said Joe. in a tone of remonstrance,
and by way of getting at it by degrees, 'I wouldn't go so far as to
say that, for that's a deal to say; but she ain't — '

'Living, Joe?'

Thats nigher where it is,' said Joe; 'she ain't living.'

'Did she linger long, Joe?'

'Arter you was took ill, pretty much about what you might call
(if you was put to it) a week,' said Joe; still determined, on my
account, to come at everything by degrees.

'Dear Joe, have you heard what becomes of her property?'

'Well, old chap,' said Joe, 'it do appear that she had settled the
most of it, which I meantersay tied it up, on Miss Estella. But she
had wrote out a little coddleshell in her own hand a day or two
afore the accident, leaving a cool four thousand to Mr. Matthew
Pocket. And why, do you suppose, above all things, Pip, she left
that cool four thousand unto him? ''Because of Pip's account of
him the said Matthew." I am told by Biddy, that air the writing,'
said Joe, repeating the legal turn as if it did him infinite good,
^ "account of him the said Matthev/." And a cool four thousand,
Pip!'

I never discovered from whom Joe derived the conventional
temperature of the four thousand pounds, but it appeared to make
the sum of money more to him, and he had a manifest relish in
insisting on its being cool.

This account gave me great joy, as it perfected the only good
thing I had done. I asked Joe whether he had heard if any of the
other relations had any legacies?

'Miss Sarah,' said Joe, 'she have twenty-five pound perannium
fur to buy pills, on account of being bilious. Miss Georgiana, she

have twenty pound down. Mrs. what's the name of them wild

beasts with humps, old chap?'

'Camels?' said I, wondering why he could possibly want to
know.

Joe nodded. 'Mrs. Camels,' by which I presently understood he
meant Camilla, 'she have five pound fur to buy rushlights to put
iher in spirits when she wake up in the night.'

454 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

The accuracy of these recitals was sufficiently obvious to me, to
give me great confidence in Joe's information. 'And now/ said Joe,
*you ain't that strong yet, old chap, that you can take in more
nor one additional shovel-full to-day. Old Orlick he's been a
bustin' open a dwelling-ouse/

Whose?' said I.

'Not, I grant you but what his manners is given to blusterous,'
said Joe, apologetically; 'still, a Englishman's ouse is his Castle,
and castles must not be busted 'cept when done in war time. And
wotsume'er the failings on his part he were a corn and seedsman
in his hart.'

'Is it Pumblechook's house that has been broken into, then?'

'That's it, Pip,' said Joe; 'and they took his till, and they took
his cash-box, and they drinked his wine, and they partook of his
wittles and they slapped his face and they pulled his nose, and they
tied him up to his bedpust, and they giv' him a dozen, and they
stuffed his mouth full of flowering annuals to perwent his crying
out. But he knowed Orlick, and Orlick's in the county jail.'

By these approaches we arrived at unrestricted conversation.
I was slow to gain strength, but I did slowly and surely become
less weak, and Joe stayed with me, and I fancied I was little Pip
again.

For, the tenderness of Joe was so beautifully proportioned to my
need, that I was like a child in his hands. He would sit and talk
to me in the old confidence, and with the old simplicity, and in the
old unassertive protecting way, so that I would half believe that
all my life since the days of the old kitchen was one of the mental
troubles of the fever that was gone. He did everything for me ex-
cept the household work, for which he had engaged a very decent
woman, after paying off the laundress on his first arrival. 'Which
I do assure you, Pip,' he would often say, in explanation of that
liberty; 'I found her a tapping the spare bed, like a cask of beer,
and drawing off the feathers in a bucket, for sale. Which she would
have tapped yourn next, and draw'd it off with you a laying on it,
and was then a carrying away the coals gradiwally in the soup-
tureen and wegetable-dishes, and the wine and spirits in your Wel-
lington boots.' ^

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 455

We looked forward to the day when I should go out for a ride,
as we had once looked forward to the day of my apprenticeship.
And when the day came, and an open carriage was got into the
Lane, Joe wrapped me up, took me in his arms, carried me down
to it, and put me in, as if I were still the small helpless creature
to whom he had so abundantly given of the wealth of his great
nature.

And Joe got in beside me, and we drove away together into the
country, w>ere the rich summer growth was already on the trees
and on the grass, and sweet summer scents filled all the air. The
day happened to be Sunday, and when I looked on the loveliness
around me, and thought how it had grown and changed, and how
the little wild flowers had been forming, and the voices of the birds
had been strengthening, by day and by night, under the sun and
under the stars, while poor I lay burning and tossing on my bed,
the mere rembrance of having burned and tossed there, came like
a check upon my peace. But, when I heard the Sunday bells, and
looked around a little more upon the outspread beauty, I felt that
I was not nearly thankful enough — that I was too weak yet, to be
even that — and I laid my head on Joe's shoulder, as I had laid it
long ago when he had taken me to the Fair or where not, and it
was too much for my young senses.

More composure came to me after a while, and we talked as we
used to talk, lying on the grass at the old Battery. There was no
change whatever in Joe. Exactly what he had been in my eyes
then, he was in my eyes still; just as simply faithful, just as simply
right.

When we got back again and he lifted me out, and carried me —
so easily! — across the court and up the stairs, I thought of that
eventful Christmas Day when he had carried me over the marshes.
We had not yet made any allusion to my change of fortune, nor
did I know how much of my late history he was acquainted with.
I was so doubtful of myself now, and put so much trust in him,
that I could not satisfy myself whether I ought to refer to it when
he did not.

'Have you heard, Joe,' I asked him that evening, upon further
consideration, as he smoked his pipe at the window, 'who my pa-
tron was?'

456 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

'I heerd,' returned Joe, 'as it were not Miss Havisham, old chap.'

'Did you hear .vho it was, Joe?'

'Well ! I heerd as it were a person what sent the person what giv'
you the bank-notes at the Jolly Bargemen, Pip.'

'So it was '

'Astonishing'' aaid Joe, in the placidest way.

'Did you hear that he was dead, Joe?' I presently asked, with
increasing diffidence.

'Which? Him as sent the bank-notes, Pip?'

'Yes.^

'I think,' said Joe, after meditating a long time, and looking
rather evasively at the window-seat, 'as I did hear tell that how
he were something or another in a general way in that direction.'

'Did you hear anything of his circumstances, Joe?'

'Not partickler, Pip.'

'If you would like to hear, Joe — ' I was beginning, when Joe
got up and came to my sofa.

'Look'ee here, old chap,' said Joe, bending over me. 'Ever the
best of friends; ain't us, Pip?'

I was ashamed to answer him.

'Wery good, then,' said Joe, as if I had answered; 'that's all
right; that's agreed upon. Then why go into subjects, old chap,
which as betwixt two sech must be for ever onnecessary? There's
subjects enough as betwixt two sech, without onnecessary ones.
Lord! To think of j^our poor sister and her Rampages! And don't
you remember Tickler?'

'I do indeed, Joe.'

Took'ee here, old chap,' said Joe. 'I done whac I could to keep
you and Tickler in sunders, but my power were not always fully
equal to my inclinations. For when your poor sister had a mind
to drop into you, it were not so much,' said Joe, in his favourite
argumentative way, 'that she dropped into me too, if I put myself
in opposition to her, but that she dropped into you always heavier
for it. I noticed that. It ain't a grab at a man's whisker, nor yet
a shake or two of a man (to which your sister was quite welcome),
that 'ud put a man off from getting a little child out of punish-
ment. But when that little child is dropped into, heavier, for that

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 457

grab of whisker or shaking, then that man naterally up and says to
himself, "Where is the good as you are a doing? I grant you I see
the 'arm," says the man, ''but I don't see the good. I call upon
you, sir, therefore, to pint out the good." '

The man says?' I observed, as Joe waited for me to speak.

'The man says,' Joe assented. 'Is he right, that man?'

'Dear Joe, he is always right.'

'Well, old chap,' said Joe, 'then abide by your words. If he's
always right (which in general he's more likely wrong), he's right
when he says this: — Supposing ever you kep any little matter to
yourself, when you was a little child, you kep it mostly because
you know'd as J. Gargery's power to part you and Tickler in sun-
ders, were not fully equal to his inclinations. Theerfore, think
no more of it as betwixt two sech, and do not let us pass remarks
upon onnecessary subjects. Biddy giv' herself a deal o' trouble
with me afore I left (for I am most awful dull), as I should view
it in this light, and, viewing it in this light, as I should ser put it.
Both of which,' said Joe, quite charmed with his logical arrange-
ment, 'being done, now this to you a true friend, say. Namely.
You mustn't go a over-doing on it, but you must have your sup-
iper and your wine-and-water, and you must be put betwixt the
sheets.'

The delicacy with which Joe dismissed this theme, and the sweet
;tact and kindness with which Biddy — who with her woman's wit
had found me out so soon — had prepared him for it, made a deep
impression on my mind. But whether Joe knew how poor I was,
and how my great expectations had all dissolved, like our own
marsh mists before the sun, I could not understand.

Another thing in Joe that I could not understand when it first
began to develop itself, but which I s©on arrived at a sorrowful
comprehension of, was this: As I became stronger and better, Joe
became a little less easy with me. In my weakness and entire de-
pendence on him, the dear fellow had fallen into the old tone, and
:alled me by the old names, the dear 'old Pip, old chap,' that now
vvere music in my ears. I too had fallen into the old ways, only
lappy and thankful that he let me. But, imperceptibily, though I
leld by them fast, Joe's hold upon them began to slacken; and

I

458 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

whereas I wondered at this, at first, I soon began to understand
that the cause of it was in me, and that the fault of it was all mine.

Ah! Had I given Joe no reason to doubt my constancy, and to
think that in prosperity I should grow cold to him and cast him off?
Had I given Joe's innocent heart no cause to feel instinctively that
as I got stronger, his hold upon me would be weaker, and that he
had better loosen it in time and let me go, before I plucked myself
away?

It was on the third or fourth occasion of my going out walking
in the Temple Gardens, leaning on Joe's arm, that I saw this
change in him very plainly. We had been sitting in the bright
warm sunlight, looking at the river, and I chanced to say as we got
up:

'See, Joe! I can walk quite strongly. Now, you shall see me walk
back by myself.'

'Which do not over-do it, Pip,' said Joe; 'but I shall be happy
fur to see you able, sir.'

The last word grated on me; but how could I reinonstrate! I
walked no further than the gate of the gardens, and then pretended
to be weaker than I was, and asked Joe for his arm. Joe gave it
me, but was thoughtful.

I, for my part, was thoughtful too; for how best to check this
growing change in Joe, was a great perplexity to my remorseful
thoughts. That I was ashamed to tell him exactly how I was
placed, and what I had come down to, I do not seek to conceal;
but, I hope my reluctance was not quite an unworthy one. He
would want to help me out of his little savings, I knew and I knew
that he ought not to help me, and that I must not suffer him to do
it.

It was a thoughtful evening with both of us. But before we
went to bed, I had resolved that I would wait over to-morrow, to-
morrow being Sunday, and would begin my new course with the
new week. On Monday morning I would speak to Joe about this
change, I would lay aside this last vestige of reserve, I would tell I
him what I had in my thoughts (that Secondly, not yet arrived at),
and why I had not decided to go out to Herbert, and then the
change would be conquered for ever. As I cleared, Joe cleared, and

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 459

it seemed as though he had sympathetically arrived at a resolution
too.

We had a quiet day on the Sunday, and we rode out into the
country, and then walked in the fields.

'I feel thankful that I have been ill, Joe,' I said.

'Dear old Pip, old chap, you're a'most come round, sir.'

'It has been a memorable time for me, Joe.'

'Likewise for myself, sir,' Joe returned.

'We have had a time together, Joe, that I can never forget.
There were d?vs once, I know, that I did for a while forget; but 1
never shall forget these.'

'Pip,' said Joe, appearing a little hurried and troubled, 'there
has been larks. And, dear sir, what have been betwixt us — have
been.'

At night, when I had gone to bed, Joe came into my room, as
he had done all through my recovery. He asked me if I felt sure
that I was as well as in the morning?

'Yes, dear Joe, quite.'

*And are always a getting stronger, old chap?'

'Yes, dear Joe, steadily.'

Joe patted the coverlet on my shoulder with his great good
hand, and said, in what I thought a husky voice, 'Good-night! '

When I got up in the morning, refreshed and stronger yet, I was
full of my resolution to tell Joe all, without delay. I would tell
him before breakfast. I would dress at once and go to his room and
surprise him; for, it was the first day I had been up early. I went
to his room, and he was not there. Not only was he not there, but
his box was gone.

I hurried then to the breakfast table, and on it found a letter.
These were its brief contents.

^Not wishful to intrude I have departed fur you are well again
dear Pip and will do better without

'Jo.
'P.S. Ever the best of friends.'

Enclosed in the letter, was a receipt for the debt and costs on
which I had been arrested. Down to that moment I had vainly

460 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

supposed that my creditor had withdrawn or suspended proceed-
ings until I should be quite recovered. I had never dreamed of
Joe's having paid the money; but, Joe had paid it, and the re-
ceipt was in his name.

What remained for me now, but to follow him to the dear old
forge, and there to have out my disclosure to him, and my penit-
ent remonstrance with him, and there to relieve my mind and heart
of that reserved Secondly, which had begun as a vague something
lingering in my thoughts, and had formed into a settled purpose?

The purpose was, that I would go to Biddy, that I would show
her how humbled and repentant I came back, that I would tell
her how I had lost all I once hoped for, that I would remind her
of our old confidences in my first unhappy time. Then, I would say
to her, 'Biddy, I think you once liked me very well, when my er-
rant heart, even while it strayed away from you, was quieter and
better with you than it ever has been since. If you can like me
only half as well once more, if you can take me with all my faults
and disappointments on my head, if you can receive me like a for-
given child (and indeed I am as sorry, Biddy, and have as much
need of a hushing voice and a soothing hand), I hope I am a little
worthier of you than I was — not much, but a little. And, Biddy,
it shall rest with you to say whether I shall work at the forge with
Joe, or whether I shall try for any different occupation down in
this country, or whether we shall go away to a distant place where
an opportunity awaits me which I set aside when it was offered,
until I knew your answer. And now, dear Biddy, if you can tell me
that you will go through the world with me, you will surely make
it a better world for me, and me a better man for it, and I will
try hard to make it a better world for you.'

Such was my purpose. After three days more of recovery, I went
down to the old place, to put it in execution. And how I sped in
it, is all I have left to tell.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 461

CHAPTER LVIII

The tidings of my high fortunes having had a heavy fall, had got
down to my native place and its neighbourhood, before I got there.
I found the Blue Boar in possession of the intelligence, and I found
that it made a great change in the Boar's demeanour. Whereas the
Boar had culti'^ated my good opinion with warm assiduity when I
was coming into property, the Boar was exceedingly cool on the
subject now that I was going out of property.

It was evening when I arrived, much fatigued by the journey I
had so often made so easily. The Boar could not put me into my
usual bedroom, which was engaged (probably by some one who
had expectations), and could only assign me a very indifferent
chamber among the pigeons and post-chaises up the yard. But, I
had as sound a sleep in that lodging as in the most superior ac-
commodation the Boar could have given me, and the quality of my
dreams was about the same as in the best bedroom.

Early in the morning while my breakfast was getting ready, I
strolled round by Satis House. There were printed bills on the
gate and on bits of carpet hanging out of the windows, announc-
ing a sale by auction of the Household Furniture and Effects, next
week. The House itself was to be sold as old building materials,
and pulled down. Lot i was marked in whitewashed knock-knee
letters on the brewhouse; Lot 2 on that part of the main building
which had been so long shut up. Other lots were marked off on
other parts of the structure, and the ivy had been torn down to
make room for the inscriptions, and much of it trailed low in the
dust and was withered already. Stepping in for a moment at the
open gate and looking around me with the uncomfortable air of a
stranger who had no business there, I saw the auctioneer's clerk
walking on the casks and telling them off for the information of a
catalogue compiler, pen in hand, who made a temporary desk of
the wheeled chair I had so often pushed along to the tune of (Md
Clem.

462 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

When I got back to my breakfast in the Boar's coffee-room, I
found Mr. Pumblechook conversing with the landlord. Mr. Pum-
blechook (not improved in appearance by his late nocturnal ad-
venture) was waiting for me, and addressed me in the following
terms.

'Young man, I am sorry to see you brought low. But what else
could be expected ! What else could be expected ! '

As he extended his hand with a magnificently forgiving air, and
as I was broken by illness and unfit to quarrel, I took it.

'William,' said Mr. Pumblechook to the waiter, 'put a muffin on
table. And has it come to this! Has it come to this!'

I frowningly sat down to my breakfast. Mr. Pumblechook stood
over me and poured out my tea — before I could touch the tea-
pot— with the air of a benefactor who was resolved to be true to
the last.

'William,' said Mr. Pumblechook, mournfully, 'put the salt on.
In happier times,' addressing me, 'I think you took sugar? i\nd did
you take milk? You did. Sugar and milk. William bring a water-
cress.'

'Thank you,' said I, shortly, 'but I don't eat watercresses.'

'You don't eat 'em,' returned Mr. Pumblechook, sighing and
nodding his head several times, as if he might have expected that,
and as if abstinence from watercresses were consistent with my
downfall. 'True. The simple fruits of the earth. No. You needn't
bring any, William.'

I went on with my breakfast, and Mr. Pumblechook continued
to stand over me, staring fishily and breathing noisily, as he always
did.

'Little more than skin and bone!' mused Mr. Pumblechook
aloud. 'And yet when he went away from here (I may say with
my blessing), and I spread afore him my humble store, like the
Bee, he was as plump as a Peach! '

This reminded me of the wonderful difference between the ser-
vile manner in which he had offered his hand in my new prosperity,
saying, 'May I?' and the ostentatious clemency with which he
had just now exhibited the same fat five fingers.

«l

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 463

'Hah!' he went on, handing me the bread-and-butter. 'And air
you a-going to Joseph?'

'In Heaven's name,' said I, firing in spite of myself, 'what does
it matter to j'-ou where I am going? Leave that teapot alone.'

It was the worst course I could have taken, because it gave
Pumblechook the opportunity he wanted.

'Yes, young man,' said he, releasing the handle of the article in
question, retiring a step or two from my table, and speaking for
the behoof of the landlord and waiter at the door, 'I will leave that
teapot alone. Yo \ are right, young man. For once, you are right.
I forgit myself when I take such an interest in your breakfast, as
to w'sh your frame, exhausted by the debilitating effects of pro-
digygality, to be stimilated by the 'olesome nourishment of your
forefathers. And yet,' said Pumblechook, turning to the landlord
and waiter, and pointing me out at arm's length, 'this is him as I
ever sported with in his days of happy infancy! Tell me not it can-
not be; I tell you this is him!'

A low murmur from the two replied. The waiter appeared to
be particularly affected.

'This is him,' said Pumblechook, 'as I have rode in my shay-
cart. This is him as I have seen brought up by hand. This is him
untoe the sister of which 1 was uncle by marriage, as her name
was Georgiana M'ria from her own mother, let him deny it if he
can!'

The waiter seemed convinced that I could not deny it, and that
it gave the case a black look.

'Young man,' said Pumblechook, screwing his head at me in
the old fashion, 'you air a-going to Joseph. What does it mat-
ter to me, you ask me, where you air a-going? I say to you. Sir,
you air a-going to Joseph.'

The waiter coughed, as if he modestly invited me to get over
that.

'Now,' said Pumblechook, and all this with a most exasperating
air of saying in the cause of virtue what was perfectly convincing
and conclusive, 'I will tell you what to say to Joseph. Here is
Squires of the Boar present, known and respected in this town, and

464 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

here is William, which his father's name was Potkins if I do not
deceive myself.'

'You do not, sir,' said William.

'In their presence,' pursued Pumblechook, 'I will tell you, young
man, what to say to Joseph. Says you, "Joseph, I have this day
seen my earliest benefactor and the founder of my fortun's. I will
name no names, Joseph, but so they are pleased to call him up-
town, and I have seen that man." '

'I swear I don't see him here,' said I.

'Say that likewise,' retorted Pumblechook. 'Say you said that,
and even Joseph will probably betray surprise.'

'There you quite mistake him,' said I. 'I know better.'

'Says you,' Pumblechook went on, "Joseph, I have seen that
man, and that man bears you no malice and bears me no malice.
He knows your character, Joseph, and is well acquainted with your
pig-headedness and ignorance; and he knows my character,
Joseph, and he knows my want of gratitoode. Yes, Joseph," says
you,' here Pumblechook shook his head and hand at me, ' "he
knows my total deficiency of common human gratitoode. He knows
it, Joseph, as none can. You do not know it, Joseph, having no call
to know it, but that man do." '

Windy donkey as he was, it really amazed me that he could have
the face to talk thus to mine.

'Says you, "Joseph, he gave me a little message, which I will now
repeat. It was, that in my being brought low, he saw the finger of
Providence. He knowed that finger when he saw it, Joseph, and
he saw it plain. It pinted out this writing, Joseph. Reward oj in-
gratitoode to earliest benefactor, and founder of fortun's. But that
man said that he did not repent of what he had done, Joseph.
Not at all. It was right to do it, it was kind to do it, it was benev-
olent to do it, and he would do it again." '

'It's a pity,' said I, scornfully, as I finished my interrupted
breakfast, 'that the man did not say what he had done and would
do again.'

'Squires of the Boar!' Pumblechook was now addressing the
landlord, 'and William 1 I have no objections to your mentioning,
either up-town or down-town, if such should be your wishes, that

III

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 465

it was right to do it, kind to do it, benevolent to do it, and that I
would do it again.'

With those words the Impostor shook them both by the hand,
with an air, and left the house ; leaving me much more astonished
than delighted by the virtues of that same indefinite 'it.' I was
not long after him in leaving the house too, and when I went down
the High Street I saw him holding forth (no doubt to the same ef-
fect) at his shop door to a select group, who honoured me with very
unfavourable glances as I passed on the opposite side of the way.

But, it was only the pleasanter to turn to Biddy and to Joe,
whose great forbearance shone more brightly than before, if that
could be, contrasted with this brazen pretender. I went towards
them slowly, for my limbs were weak, but with a sense of increas-
ing relief as I drew nearer to them, and a sense of leaving arrogance
and untruthfulness further and further behind.

The June weather was delicious. The sky was blue, the larks
were soaring high over the green corn, I thought all that country-
side more beautiful and peaceful by far than I had ever known
it to be yet. Many pleasant pictures of the life that I would
lead there, and of the change for the better that would come over
my character when I had a guiding spirit at my side whose simple
faith and clear home- wisdom I had proved, beguiled my way.
They awakened a tender emotion in me; for, my heart was
softened by my return, and such a change had come to pass, that
I felt like one who was toiling home barefoot from distant travel,
and whose wanderings had lasted many years.

The schoolhouse where Biddy was mistress, I had never seen.;
but, the little roundabout lane by which I entered the village for
quietness' sake, took me past it. I was disappointed to find that
the day was a holiday; no children were there, and Biddy's house
was closed. Some hopeful notion of seeing her, busily engaged
in her daily duties, before she saw me, had been in my mind and
was defeated.

But, the forge was a very short distance off, and I went to-
wards it under the sweet green limes, listening for the clink of
Joe's hammer. Long after I ought to have heard it, and long
after I had fancied I heard it and found it but a fancy, all was

4^66 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

still. The limes were there, and the white thorns were there, and
the chestnut-trees were there, and their leaves rustled har-
moniously when I stopped to listen; but, the clink of Joe's ham-
mer was not in the midsummer wind.

Almost fearing, without knowing why, to come in view of the
forge, I saw it at last, and saw that it was closed. No gleam of
fire, no glittering shower of sparks, no roar of bellows ; all shut
up, and still.

But, the house was not deserted, and the best parlour seemed
to be in use, for there were white curtains fluttering in its window,
and the window was open and gay with flowers. I went softly
towards it, meaning to peep over the flowers, when Joe and Biddy
stood before me, arm in arm.

At first Biddy gave a cry, as if she thought it was my appari-
tion, but in another moment she was in my embrace. I wept to
see her, and she wept to see me; I because she looked so fresh and
pleasant ; she, because I looked so worn and white.

'But, dear Biddy, how smart you are! '

*Yes, dear Pip.'

*And Joe, how smart you areP

*Yes, dear old Pip, old chap.'

I looked at both of them, from one to the other, and then —

'It's my wedding-day,' cried Biddy, in a burst of happiness,
'and I am married to Joe ! '

They had taken me into the kitchen, and I had laid my head
down on the old deal table. Biddy held one of my hands to
her lips, and Joe's restoring touch was on my shoulder. 'Which
he warn't strong enough, my dear, fur to be surprised,' said
Joe. And Biddy said, 'I ought to have thought of it, dear Joe,
but I was too happy.' They were both so overjoyed to see me,
so proud to see me, so touched by my coming to them, so de-
lighted that I should have come by accident to make their day
complete 1

My first thought was one of great thankfulness that I had
never breathed this last baffled hope to Joe. How often, while he
was with me in my illness, had it risen to my lips. How irrevocable

I

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 467

would have been his knowledge of it. if he had remained with me
but another hour!

'Dear Biddy/ said I, 'you have the best husband in the whole
world, and if you could have seen him by my bed you would
have — But no, you couldn't love him better than you do.'

'No, I couldn't indeed,' said Biddy.

'And, dear Joe, you have the best wife in the whole world, and
she will make you as happy as even you deserve to be, you dear,
good, noble Joe!'

Joe looked at me with a quivering lip, and fairly put his sleeve
bciore his eyes.

'And Joe and Biddy both, as you have been to church to-day
and are in charity and love with all mankind, receive my humble
thanks for all you have done for me, and all I have so ill repaid!
And when I say that I am going away within the hour, for I am
soon going abroad, and that I shall never rest until I have worked
for the money with which you have kept me out of prison, and
have sent it to you, don't think, dear Joe and Biddy, that if I
could repay it a thousand times over, I suppose I could cancel a
farthing of the debt I owe you, or that I would do so if I could! '

They were both melted by these words, and both entreated me
to say no more.

'But I must say more. Dear Joe, I hope you will have children
to love, and that some little fellow will sit in this chimney corner
of a winter night, who may remind you of another little fellow
gone out of it for ever. Don't tell him, Joe, that I was thankless;
don't tell him, Biddy, that I was ungenerous and unjust; only
tell him that I honoured you both, because you were both so
good and true, and that, as your child, I said it would be natural
to him to grow up a much better man than I did.'

'I ain't a-going,' said Joe, from behind his sleeve, 'to tell him
nothink o' that natur, Pip. Nor Biddy ain't. Nor yet no one ain't.'

And now, though I know you have already done it in your own
kind hearts, pray tell me, both, that you forgive me! Pray let
me hear you say the words, that I may carry the sound of them
away with me, and then I shall be able to believe that you can trust
me, and think better of me, in the time to comel'

468 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

'O dear old Pip, old chap/ said Joe. 'God knows as I forgive
you, if I have anythink to forgive!'

'Amen ! And God knows I do ! ' echoed Biddy.

'Now let me go up and look at my old little room, and rest
there a few minutes by myself. And then when I have eaten and
drunk with you, go with me as far as the finger-post, dear Joe and
Biddy, before we say good-bye!'

I sold all I had, and put aside as much as I could, for a com-
position with my creditors — who gave n^e ample time to pay them
in full — and I went out and joined Herbert. Within a month, I
had quitted England, and within two months I was clerk to Clar-
riker and Co., and within four months I assumed my first un-
divided responsibility. For, the beam across the parlour ceiling
at Mill Pond Bank, had then ceased to tremble under old Bill
Barley's growls and was at peace, and Herbert had gone away to
marry Clara, and I was left in sole charge of the Eastern Branch
until he brought her back.

Many a year went round, before I was a partner in the House;
but, I lived happily with Herbert and his wife, and lived fru-
gally, and paid my debts, and maintained a constant correspond-
ence with Biddy and Joe. It was not until I became third in the
Firm, that Clarriker betrayed me to Herbert; but, he then declared
that the secret of Herbert's partnership had been long enough upon
his conscience, and he must tell it. So, he told it, and Herbert
was as much moved as amazed, and the dear fellow and I were not
the worse friends for the long concealment. I must not leave it
to be supposed that we were ever a great House, or that we made
mints of money. We were not in a grand way of business, but
we had a good name, and worked for our profits, and did very
well. We owed so much to Herbert's ever cheerful industry and
readiness, that I often wondered how I had conceived that old idea
of his inaptitude, until I was one day enlightened by the reflection,
that perhaps the inaptitude had never been in him at all, but had
been in me.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 469

CHAPTER LIX

For eleven years I had not seen Joe nor Biddy with my bodily
eyes — though they had both been often before my fancy in the
East — when, upon an evening in December, an hour or two after
dark, I laid my hand softly on the latch of the old kitchen door.
I touched it so softly that I was not heard and I looked in unseen.
There, smoking his pipe in the old place by the kitchen firelight,
as hale and as strong as ever, though a little grey, sat Joe; and
there, fenced into the corner with Joe's leg, and sitting on my own
little stool looking at the fire, was — I again !

'We giv' him the name of Pip for your sake, dear old chap,' said
Joe, delighted when I took another stool by the child's side (but I
did not rumple his hair), 'and we hoped he might grow a little bit
like you, and we think he do.'

I thought so too, and I took him out for a walk next morning
and we talked immensely, understandinng one another to perfec-
tion. And I took him down to the churchyard, and set him on a
certain tombstone there, and he showed me from that elevation
which stone was sacred to the memory of Philip Pirrip, late of this
Parish, and Also Georgiana, Wife of the Above.

'Biddy,' said I, when I talked with her after dinner, as her little
girl lay sleeping in her lap, 'you must give Pip to me, one of these
days; or lend him, at all events.'

'No, no,' said Biddy, gently. 'You must marry.'

'So Herbert and Clara say, but I don't think I shall, Biddy. I
have so settled down in their home, that it's not at all likely. I am
already quite an old bachelor.'

Biddy looked down at her child, and put its little hand to her
lips, and then put the good matronly hand with which she had
touched it, into mine. There was something in the action and in
the light pressure of Biddy's wedding-ring, that had a very pretty
eloquence in it.

'Dear Pip,' said Biddy, 'you are sure you don't fret for her?'

'O no— I think not, Biddy.'

470 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

'Tell me as an old friend. Have you quite forgotten her?'

'My dear Biddy, I have forgotten nothing in my life that ever
had a foremost place there, and little that ever had any place there.
But that poor dream, as I once used to call it, has all gone by,
Biddy, all gone by ! '

Nevertheless, I knew while I said those words, that I secretly in-
tended to revisit the site of the old house that evening, alone, for
her sake. Yes, even so. For Estella's sake.

I had heard of her as leading a most unhappy life, and as being
separated from her husband, who had used her with great cruelty,
and who had become quite renowned as a compound of pride, av-
arice, brutality, and meanness. And I had heard of the death of
her husband, from an accident consequent on his ill-treatment of
a horse. This release had befallen her some two years before; for
anything I knew, she was married again.

The early dinner-hour at Joe's left me abundance of time, with-
out hu^;rying my talk with Biddy, to walk over to the old spot be-
fore dark. But, what with loitering on the way, to look at old ob-
jects and to think of old times, the day had quite declined when I
came to the place.

There was no house now, no brewery, no building whatever left,
but, the wall of the old garden. The cleared space had been en-
closed with a rough fence, and looking over it, I saw that some of
the old ivy had struck root anew, and was growing green on low
quiet mounds of ruin. A gate in the fence standing ajar, I pushed
it open and went in.

A cold silvery mist had veiled the afternoon, and the moon was
not yet up to scatter it. But, the stars were shining beyond the
mist, and the moon was coming, and the evening was not dark. I
could trace out where every part of the old house had been, and
where the brewery had been, and where the gates, and where the
casks. I had done so, and was looking along the desolate garden-
walk, when I beheld a solitary figure in it.

The figure showed itself aware of me as I advanced. It had been
moving towards me, but it stood still. As I drew nearer, I saw it
to be the figure of a woman. As I drew nearer yet, it was about to
turn away, when it stopped, and let me come up with it. Then, it

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 471

faltered as if much surprised, and uttered my name, and I cried
out:

^Estella!'

'I am greatly changed. I wonder you know me.'

The freshness of her beauty was indeed gone, but its indescrib-
able majesty and its indescribable charm remained. Those attrac-
tions in it, I had seen before; what I had never seen before, was
the saddened softened light of the once proud eyes; what I had
never felt before, was the friendly touch of the once insensible
hand.

We sat down on a bench that was near, and I said, 'After so
many years, it is strange that we should thus meet again, Estella,
here where our first meeting was! Do you often come back?'

'I have never been here since.'

'Nor I.'

The moon began to rise, and I thought of the placid look at
the white ceiling, which had passed away. The moon began to rise,
and I thought of the pressure on my hand when I had spoken the
last words he had heard on earth.

Estella was the next to break the silence that ensued between us.

'I have very often hoped and intended to come back, but have
been prevented by many circumstances. Poor, poor old place!'

The silvery mist was touched with the first rays of the moonlight,
and the same rays touched the tears that dropped from her eyes.
Not knowing that I saw them, and setting herself to get the better
of them, she said quietly:

'Were you wondering, as you walked along, how it came to be
left in this condition?'

'Yes, Estella.'

'The ground belongs to me. It is the only possesion I have not
relinquished. Everything else has gone from me, little by little,
but I have kept this. It was the subject of the only determined
resistance I made in all the wretched years.'

'Is it to be built on?'

'At last it is, I came here to take leave of it before its change.
And you,' she said, in a voice of touching interest to a wanderer,
'you live abroad still.'

472 GREAT EXPECTATIONS

'Still.'

*And do well, I am sure?'

'I work pretty hard for a sufficient living, and therefore — Yes,
I do well!'

'I have often thought of you,' said Estella.

'Have you?'

'Of late, very often. There was a long hard time when I kept
far from me, the remembrance of what I had thrown away when I
was quite ignorant of its worth. But, since my duty has not been
incompatible with the admic^ion of that remembrance, I have given
it a place in my heart.'

'You have always held your place in my heart,' I answered.

And we were silent again until she spoke.

'I little thought,' said Estella, 'that I should take leave of you
in taking leave of this spot. I am very glad to do so.'

'Glad to part again, Estella? To me, parting is a painful thing.
To me, the remembrance of our last parting has been ever mourn-
ful and painful.'

'But you said to me,' returned Estella, very earnestly, ' "God
bless you, God forgive you!" And if you could say that to me
then, you will not hesitate to say that to me now — now, when suf-
fering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught
me to understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent
and broken, but — I hope — into a better shape. Be as considerate
and good to me as you were, and tell me we are friends.'

'We are friends,' said I, rising and bending over her, as she rose
from the bench.

'And will continue friends apart,' said Estella.

I took her hand in mine, and we went out of the ruined place;
and, as the morning mists had risen long ago when I first left the
forge, so, the evening mists were rising now, and in all the broadi
expanse of tranquil light they showed to me, I sav; no shadow of J
another parting? ^rom her.

THE END

SOME ACCOUNT OF AN
EXTRAORDINARY TRAVELLER

Oom© AccoTULULif: of an

Jil^xif:Fao]r([iiiiaFy 1 raveiler

[April 20, 1850]

NO longer ago than this Easter time last past, we became ac*
quainted with the subject of the present notice. Our
knowledge of him is not by any means an intimate one,
and is only of a public nature. We have never interchanged any
conversation with him, except on one occasion when he asked us to
have the goodness to take off our hat, to which we replied
'Certainly.'

Mr. Booley was born (we believe) in Rood Lane, in the City
of London. He is now a gentleman advanced in life, and has
for some years resided in the neighbourhood of Islington. His
father was a wholesale grocer (perhaps) and he was (possibly)
in the same way of business; or he may, at an early age, have
become a clerk in the Bank of England or in a private bank, or in
the India House. It will be observed that we make no pretence of
having any information in reference to the private history of this
remarkable man, and that our account of it must be received as
rather speculative than authentic.

In person Mr. Booley is below the middle size, and corpulent.
His countenance is florid, he is perfectly bald, and soon hot; and
there is a composure in his gait and manner, calculated to im-
press a stranger with the idea of his being, on the whole, an un-
wieldy man. It is only in his eye that the adventurous character
of Mr. Booley is seen to shine. It is a moist, bright eye, of a
cheerful expression, and indicative of keen and eager curiosity.

It was not until late in Hfe that Mr. Booley conceived the idea
of entering on the extraordinary amount of travel he has since
accomplished. He had attained the age of sixty-five before he left

475

476 AN EXTRAORDINARY TRAVELLER

England for the first time. In all the immense journeys he has
since performed, he has never laid aside the English dress, nor
departed in the slightest degree from English customs. Neither
does he speak a vv^ord of any language but his own.

Mr. Booley's powers of endurance are wonderful. All climates
are alike to him. Nothing exhausts him; no alternations of heat
and cold appear to have the least effect upon his hardy frame. His
capacity of travelling, day and night, for thousands of miles, has
never been approached by any traveller of whom we have any
knowledge through the nelp of books. An intelligent Englishman
may have occasionally pointed out to him objects and scenes of
interest; but otherwise he has travelled alone and unattended.
Though remarkable for personal cleanliness, he has carried no
luggage; and his diet has been of the simplest kind. He has often
found a biscuit, or a bun, sufficient for his support over a vast
tract of country. Frequently,. he has travelled hundreds of miles,
fasting, without the least abatement of his natural spirits. It says
much for the Total Abstinence cause, that Mr. Booley has never
had recourse to the artificial stimulus of alcohol, to sustain him
under his fatigues.

His first departure from the sedentary and monotonous life he
had hitherto led, strikingly exemplifies, we think, the energetic
character, long suppressed by that unchanging routine. Without
any communication with any member of his family — Mr. Booley
has never been married, but has many relations — without announc-
ing his intention to his solicitor, or banker, or any person en-
trusted with the management of his affairs, he closed the door of
his house behind him at one o'clock in the afternoon of a certain
day, and immediately proceeded to New Orleans, in the United
States of America.

His intention was to ascend the Mississippi and Missouri rivers,
to the base of the Rocky Mountains. Taking his passage in a
steamboat without loss of time, he was soon upon the bosom of the
Father of Waters, as the Indians call the mighty stream which,
night and day, is always carrying huge instalments of the vast
continent of the New World down into the sea.

Mr. Booley found it singularly interesting to observe the various
stages of civilisation obtaining on the banks of these mighty

AN EXTRAORDINARY TRAVELLER 477

rivers. Leaving the luxury and brightness of New Orleans — a some-
what feverish luxury and brightness, he observed, as if the
swampy soil were too much enriched in the hot sun with the
bodies of dead slaves — and passing various towns in every stage
of progress, it was very curious to observe the changes of civilisa-
tion and of vegetation too. Here, while the doomed negro race were
working in the plantations, while the republican overseer looked on,
whip in hand, tropical trees were growing, beautiful flowers in
bloom; the alligator, with his horribly sly face, and his jaws like
two great saws, was basking on the mud; and the strange moss of
the country was hanging in wreaths and garlands on the trees, like
votive offerings. A little farther towards the west, and the trees
and flowers were changed, the moss was gone, younger infant towns
were rising, forests were slowly disappearing, and the trees, obliged
to aid in the destruction of their kind, fed the heavily breathing
monster that came clanking up those solitudes laden with the
pioneers of the advancing human army. The river itself, that
moving highway, showed him every kind of floating contrivance,
from the lumbering flat-bottomed boat, and the raft of logs,
upward to the steamboat, and downward to the poor Indian's
frail canoe. A winding thread through the enormous range of
country, unrolling itself before the wanderer like the magic skein
in the story, he saw it tracked by wanderers of every kind, roaming
from the more settled world, to those first nests of men. The float-
ing theatre, dwelHng-house, hotel, museum, shop; the floating
mechanism for screwing the trunks of mighty trees out of the mud,
like antediluvian teeth; the rapidly-flowing river, and the blazing
woods; he left them all behind — town, city, and log-cabin, too; and
floated up into the prairies and savannahs, among the deserted
lodges of tribes of savages, and among their dead, lying alone on
little wooden stages with their stark faces upward towards the sky.
Among the blazing grass, and herds of buffaloes and wild horses,
and among the wigwams of the fast-declining Indians, he began
to consider how, in the eternal current of progress setting across
this globe in one unchangeable direction, like the unseen agency
that points the needle to the Pole, the Chiefs who only dance the
dances of their fathers, and will never have a new figure for a new
tune, and the Medicine men who know no Medicine but what was

478 AN EXTRAORDINARY TRAVELLER l|

Medicine a hundred years ago, must be surely and inevitably
swept from the earth, whether they be Choctawas, Mandans, Brit-
ons, Austrians, or Chinese.

He was struck, too, by the reflection that savage nature was not
by any means such a fine and noble spectacle as some delight to
represent it. He found it a poor, greasy, paint-plastered, miser-
able thing enough; but a very little way above the beasts in most
respects; in many customs a long way below them. It occurred to
him that the 'Big Bird,' or the 'Blue Fish,' or any of the other
Braves, was but a troublesome braggart after all; making a
mighty whooping and halloaing about nothing particular, doing
very little for science, not much more than the monkeys for art,
scarcely anything worth mentioning for letters, and not often
making the world greatly better than he found it. Civilisation,
Mr. Booley concluded, was, on the whole, with all its blemishes, a
more imposing sight, and a far better thing to stand by.

Mr. Booley's observations of the celestial bodies, on this voyage,
were principally confined to the discovery of the alarming fact,
that light had altogether departed from the moon; which pre- i
sented the appearance of a white dinner-plate. The clouds, too, ||
conducted themselves in an extraordinary manner, and assumed ]
the most eccentric forms, while the sun rose and set in a very
reckless way. On his return to his native country, however, he
had the satisfaction of finding all these things as usual.

It might have been expected that at his advanced age, retired
from the active duties of life, blessed with a competency, and
happy in the affections of his numerous relations, Mr. Booley
would now have settled himself down, to muse, for the remainder
of his days, over the new stock of experience thus acquired. But
travel had whetted, not satisfied, his appetite; and remembering
that he had not seen the Ohio River, except at the point of its
junction with the Mississippi, he returned to the United States,
after a short interval of repose, and appearing suddenly at Cin-
cinnati, the queen City of the West, traversed the clear waters of •
the Ohio to its Falls. In this expedition he had the pleasure of i
encountering a party of intelligent workmen from Birmingham who
were making the same tour. Also his nephew Septimus, aged only
thirteen. This intrepid boy had started from Peckham, in the old

m

AN EXTRAORDINARY TRAVELLER 479

country, with two and sixpence sterling in his pocket; and had,
when he encountered his uncle at a point of the Ohio River,
called Snaggy Bar, still one shilling of that sum remaining!

Again at home, Mr. Booley was so pressed by his apoetite for
knowledge as to remain at home only one day. At the expiration
of that short period, he actually started for New Zealand.

It is almost incredible that a man in Mr. Booley 's station of
life, however adventurous his nature, and however few his artifi-
cial wants, should cast himself on a voyage of thirteen thousand
miles from Great Britain with no other outfit than his watch and
purse, and no arms but his walking-stick. We are, however, assured
on the best authority, that thus he made the passage out, and thus
appeared, in the act of wiping his smoking head with his pocket-
handkerchief, at the entrance to Port Nicholson in Cook's Straits:
with the very spot within his range of vision, where his illustrious
predecessor, Captain Cook, so unhappily slain at Otaheite, once
anchored.

After contemplating the swarms of cattle maintained on the
hills in this neighbourhood, and always to be found by the stock-
men when they are wanted, though nobody takes any care of
them — which Mr. Booley considered the more remarkable, as their
natural objection to be killed might be supposed to be augmented
by the beauty of the climate — Mr. Booley proceeded to the town
of Wellington. Having minutely examined it in every point, and
made himself perfect master of the whole natural history and
process of manufacture of the flax-plant, with its splendid yellow
blossoms, he repaired to a Native Pa, which, unlike the Native
Pa to which he was accustomed, he found to be a town, and not a
parent. Here he oberved a chief with a long spear, making every
demonstration of spitting a visitor, but really giving him the
Maori or welcome — a word Mr. Booley is inclined to derive from
the known hospitality of our English Mayors — and here also he
observed some Europeans rubbing noses, by way of shaking hands,
with the aboriginal inhabitants. After participating in an affray
between the natives and the English soldiers in which the former
were defeated with great loss, he plunged into the Bush, and there
camped out for some months, until he had made a survey of the
whole country.

480 AN EXTRAORDINARY TRAVELLER

While leading this wild life, encamped by night near a stream
for the convenience of water in a Ware, or hut, built open in the
front, with a roof sloping backward to the ground, and made of
poles, covered and enclosed with bark or fern, it was Mr. Booley's
singular fortune to encounter Miss Creeble, of The Misses
Creeble's Boarding and Day Establishment for Young Ladies,
Kennington Oval, who, accompanied by three of her young ladies
in search of information, had achieved this marvellous journey, and
was then also in the Bush. Miss Creeble having very unsettled
opinions on the subject of gunpowder, was afraid that it entered
into the composition of the fire before the tent, and that some-
thing would presently blow up or go off. Mr. Booley, as a more
experienced traveller, assuring her that there was no danger; and
calming the fears of the young ladies, an acquaintance commenced
between them. They accomplished the rest of their travels in New
Zealand together, and the best understanding prevailed among the
little party. They took notice of the trees, as the Kiakatea, the
Kauri, the Ruta, the Pukatea, the Hinau, and the Tanakaka —
names which Miss Creeble had a bland relish in pronouncing
They admired the beautiful, arborescent, palm-like fern, abounding
everywhere, and frequently exceeding thirty feet in height. They
wondered at the curious owl, who is supposed to demand 'More
Pork!' wherever he flies, and whom Miss Creeble termed 'an ad-
monition of Nature against greediness!' And they contemplated
some very rampant natives of cannibal propensities. After many
pleasing and instructive vicissitudes, they returned to England
in company, where the ladies were safely put into a hackney
cabriolet by Mr. Booley, in Leicester Square, London.

And now, indeed, it might have been imagined that that roving
spirit, tired of rambling about the world, would have settled down
at home in peace and honour. Not so. After repairing to the
tubular bridge across the Menai Straits, and accompanying Her
Majesty on her visit to Ireland (which he characterised as 'a
magnificent Exhibition'), Mr. Booley, with his usual absence of
preparation, departed for Australia.

Here again, he lived out in the Bush, passing his time chiefly
among the working-gangs of convicts who were carrying timber.
He was much impressed by the ferocious mastiffs chained to bar-

AN EXTRAORDINARY TRAVELLER 481

rels, who assist the sentries in keeping guard over those misdoers.
But he observed that the atmosphere in this part of the world, un^
like the descriptions he had read of it, was extremely thick, and that
objects were misty, and difficult to be discerned. From a certain
unsteadiness and trembling, too, which he frequently remarked
on the face of Nature, he was led to conclude that this part of the
globe was subject to convulsive heavings and earthquakes. This
caused him to return with some precipitation.

Again at home, and probably reflecting that the countries he had
hitherto visited were new in the history of man, this extraordinary
traveller resolved to proceed up the Nile to the second cataract.
At the next performance of the great ceremony of 'opening the
Nile,' at Cairo, Mr. Booley was present.

Along that wonderful river, associated with such stupendous
fables, and with a history more prodigious than any fancy of man,
in its vast and gorgeous facts; among temples, palaces, pyramids,
colossal statues, crocodiles, tombs, obelisks, mummies, sand and
ruin; he proceeded, like an opium-eater in a mighty dream. Thebes
rose before him. An avenue of two hundred sphinxes, with not a
head among them, — one of six or eight, or ten such avenues all
leading to a common centre — conducted to the Temple of Carnak:
its walls eighty feet high and twenty-five feet thick, a mile and
three-quarters in circumference; the interior of its tremendous
hall, occupying an area of forty-seven thousand square feet, large
enough to hold four great Christian churches, and yet not more
than one-seventh part of the entire ruin. Obelisks he saw, thou-
sands of years of age, as sharp as if the chisel had cut their edges
yesterday; colossal statues fifty-two feet high, with 'little' fingers
five feet and a half long; a very world of ruins, that were mar-
vellous old ruins in the days of Herodotus; tombs cut high up in
the rock, where European travellers live solitary, as in stony
crows' nests, burning mummied Thebans, gentle and simple — of
the dried blood-royal maybe — for their daily fuel, and making
articles of furniture of their dust}^ coffins. Upon the walls of
temples, in colours fresh and bright as those of yesterday, he read
the conquests of great Egyptian monarchs; upon the tombs of
humbler people in the same blooming symbols, he saw their
ancient way of working at their trades, of riding, driving, feast-

n

482 AN EXTRAORDINARY TRAVELLER

ing, playing games; of marrying and burying, and performing on
instruments, and singing songs, and healing by the power of animal
magnetism, and performing all the occupations of life. He visited
the quarries of Silsileh, whence nearly all the red stone used by the
ancient Egyptian architects and sculptors came; and there be-
held enormous single-stoned colossal figures, nearly finished —
redly snowed up, as it were, and trying hard to break out — wait-
ing for the finishing touches, never to be given by the mummied
hands of thousands of years ago. In front of the temple of Abou
Simbel, he saw gigantic figures sixty feet in height and twenty-one
across the shoulders, dwarfing live men on camels down to pig-
mies. Elsewhere he beheld complacent monsters tumbled down like
ill-used Dolls of a Titanic make, and staring with stupid benignity
at the arid earth whereon their huge faces rested. His last look
of that amazing land was at the Great Sphinx, buried in the sand
— sand in its eyes, sand in its ears, sand drifted on its broken nose,
sand lodging, feet deep, in the ledges of its head — struggling out
of a wide sea of sand, as if to look hopelessly forth for the ancient
glories once surrounding it.

In this expedition, Mr. Booley acquired some curious informa-
tion in reference to the language of hieroglyphics. He encountered
the Simoon in the Desert, and lay down, with the rest of his caravan
until it had passed over. He also beheld on the horizon some of
those stalking pillars of sand, apparently reaching from earth to
heaven, which, with the red sun shining through them, so terrified
the Arabs attendant on Bruce, that they fell prostrate, crying that
the Day of Judgment was come. More Copts, Turks, Arabs, Fel-
lahs, Bedouins, Mosques, Mamelukes, and Moosulmen he saw,
than we have space to tell. His days were all Arabian Nights, and
he saw wonders without end.

This might have satiated any ordinary man, for a time at least.
But Mr. Booley, being no ordinary man, within twenty-four hours
of his arrival at home was making the overland journey to India.

He has emphatically described this, as 'a beautiful piece of
scenery,' and 'a perfect picture.' The appearance of Malta and
Gibraltar he can never sufficiently commend. In crossing the
desert from Grand Cairo to Suez he was particularly struck by the
undulations of the Sandscape (he preferred that word to Land-

AN EXTRAORDINARY TRAVELLER 483

scape, as more expressive of the region), and by the incident of
beholding a caravan upon its Hne of march; a spectacle which in
the remembrance always affords him the utmost pleasure. Of the
stations on the desert, and the cinnamon gardens of Ceylon, he
likewise entertains a lively recollection. Calcutta he praises also;
though he has been heard to observe that the British military at
that seat of Government were not as well proportioned as he could
desire the soldiers of his country to be; and that the breed of horses
there in use was susceptible of some improvement.

Once more in his native land, with the vigour of his constitution
unimpaired by the many toils and fatigues he had encountered,
what had Mr. Booley now to do, but, full of years and honour, to
recline upon the grateful appreciation of his Queen and country,
always eager to distinguish peaceful merit? What had he now to
do, but to receive the decoration ever ready to be bestowed, in
England, on men deservedly distinguished, and to take his place
among the best? He had this to do. He had yet to achieve the
most astonishing enterprise for which he was reserved. In all the
countries he had yet visited, he had seen no frost and snow. He
resolved to make a voyage to the ice-bound arctic regions.

In pursuance of this surprising determination, Mr. Booley ac-
companied the expedition under Sir James Ross, consisting of
Her Majesty's ships the Enterprise and Investigator, which sailed
from the River Thames on the 12th of May 1848, and which, on
the nth of September, entered Port Leopold Harbour.

In this inhospitable region, surrounded by eternal ice, cheered by
no glimpse of the sun, shrouded in gloom and darkness, Mr. Booley
passed the entire winter. The ships were covered in, and fortified
all round with walls of ice and snow; the masts were frozen up;
hoar frost settled on the yards, tops, shrouds, stays, and rigging;
around, in every direction, lay an interminable waste, on which
only the bright stars, the yellow moon, and the vivid Aurora
BoreaHs looked, by night or day.

And yet the desolate sublimity of this astounding spectacle
was broken in a pleasant and surprising manner. In the remote
solitude to which he had penetrated, Mr. Booley (who saw no
Esquimaux during his stay, though he looked for them in every
direction) had the happiness of encountering two Scotch gardeners;

484 AN EXTRAORDINARY TRAVELLER

several English compositors, accompanied by their wives; three
brass- founders from the neighbourhood of Long Acre, London;
two coach painters, a gold-beater and his only daughter, by trade
a staymaker ; and several other working-people from sundry parts
of Great Britain who had conceived the extraordinary idea of
'holiday-making' in the frozen wilderness. Hither, too, had Miss
Creeble and her three young ladies penetrated: the latter attired
in braided peacoats of a comparatively light material; and Miss
Creeole defended from the inclemency of a Polar Winter by no
other outer garment than a wadded Polka- jacket. He found this
courageous lady in the act of explaining, to the youthful sharers of
her toils, the various phases of nature by which they were sur-
rounded. Her explanations were principally wrong, but her in-
tentions always admirable.

Cheered by the society of these fellow-adventurers, Mr. Booley
slowly glided on into the summer season. And now, at midnight,
all was bright and shining. Mountains of ice, wedged and broken
into the strangest forms — jagged points, spires, pinnacles, pyra-
mids, turrets, columns in endless succession and in infinite variety,
flashing and sparkling with ten thousand hues, as though the
treasures of the earth were frozen up in all that water — appeared
on every side. Masses of ice, floating and driving hither and
thither, menaced the hardy voyagers with destruction; and
threatened to crush their strong ships, like nutshells. But, below
those ships was clear sea-water, now; the fortifying walls were
gone; the yards, tops, shrouds and rigging, free from that hoary
rust of long inaction, showed like themselves again; and the sails
bursting from the masts, like foliage which the welcome sun at
length developed, spread themselves to the wind, and wafted the
travellers away.

In the short interval that has elapsed since his safe return to
the land of his birth, Mr. Booley has decided on no new expedi-
tion; but he feels that he will yet be called upon to undertake
one, perhaps of greater magnitude than any he has achieved, and
frequently remarks, in his own easy way, that he wonders where the
deuce he will be taken to next! Possessed of good health and good
spirits, with powers unimpaired by all he has gone through, and

AN EXTRAORDINARY TRAVELLER 485

with an increase of appetite still growing with what it feeds on,
what may not be expected yet from this extraordinary man !

It was only at the close of Easter week that, sitting in an arm-
chair, at a private club called the Social Oysters, assembling at
Highbury Barn, where he is much respected, this indefatigable
traveller expressed himself in the following terms:

'It is very gratifying to me,' said he, 'to have seen so much at my
time of life, and to have acquired a knowledge of the countries I
have visited, which I could not have derived from books alone.
When I was a boy, such travelling would have been impossible, as
the gigantic-moving-panorama or diorama mode of conveyance,
which I have principally adopted (all my modes of conveyance
have been pictorial), had then not been attempted. It is a de-
lightful characteristic of these times, that new and cheap means are
continually being devised for conveying the results of actual ex-
perience to those who are unable to obtain such experiences for
themselves! and to bring them within the reach of the people —
emphatically of the people ; for it is they at large who are addressed
in these endeavours, and not exclusive audiences. Hence,' said Mr.
Booley, 'even if I see a run on an idea, like the panorama one, it
awakens no ill-humour within me, but gives me pleasant thoughts.
Some of the best results of actual travel are suggested by such
means to those whose lot it is to stay at home. New worlds open
out to them, beyond their little worlds, and widen their range of
reflection, information, sympathy, and interest. The more man
knows of man, the better for the common brotherhood among us
all. I shall, therefore,' said Mr. Booley, 'now propose to the
Social Oysters, the healths of Mr. Banvard, Mr. Brees, Mr. Phil-
lips, Mr. Allen, Mr. Prout, Messrs. Bonomi, Fahey, and Warren,
Mr. Thomas Grieve, and Mr. Burford. Long life to them all, and
more power to their pencils ! '

The Social Oysters having drunk this toast with acclamation,
Mr. Booley proceeded to entertain them with anecdotes of his
travels. This he is in the habit of doing after they have feasted
together, according to the manner of Sinbad the Sailor — except
that he does not bestow upon the Social Oysters the munificent re-
ward of one hundred sequins per night, for listening.

/